90 Percent Project - Week 26

Even though I initially said I was going to pretend this week never existed, I can’t do it. So, here are my woeful values for Week 26 (November 22-29, AM readings) for the 90 Percent Project. They’re not quite as bad as I thought they’d be.

Electricity
Week 26: 47 kWh used

The daily values broke down like this, meter readings taken in the early AM: Friday-19kWh (dehumidifier, dryer, and fans), Saturday-15kWh (dehumidifier and fans), Sunday-7kWh (fans only and the lad’s large TV), Monday-1kWh, Tuesday-2kWh, Wednesday-1kWh, Thursday-2kWh. By the looks of things, Week 27 will run around 10kWh total, barring any disasters. Bless my little laptop all to pieces.
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Gasoline purchased (for 1 person)
Week 26: 9.705 gallons

If I want to get really technical, 1 of those gallons belongs to the lad. Takes about 2 gallons to get to his Dad’s house and back. Of course, if I wanted to get super technical, I’d give both gallons to the lad since I wouldn’t have been going to the Dad’s house otherwise.

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Water (for 1 person)
Week 26: 374.05 gallons

I have no idea how much of this was flood and how much was extra use. I’d venture a guess that the gushing washing machine hose in the basement accounted for at least half. However, I did notice that with unlimited hot water, I had a tendency to turn on the hot water faucet at the drop of a hat. I guess my conclusion there is that having hot water heaters has trained us to use a heck of lot more water than we need. This morning I turned the hot water heater back to the vacation setting. My little splurge is over.

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Natural Gas
Week 26: 6 CCF

I have to admit that this baffles me. Ordinarily I use 3 CCF (300 cubic feet) with the hot water heater turned down to vacation setting all day, save for the one heated tank per day for a shower and/or laundry. This week I baked several items in the oven, had unlimited hot water all week (and I mean HOT!), basked in very un-Navy like showers, and actually did manage to make my applesauce on the regular stove top. All that extra only used 3 additional CCF?? That irks me terribly. It makes me feel as if, for all the scrimping I’ve been doing on the gas use, my normal weekly values should be a lot lower than 3 CCF, when 6 CCF buys me enormous excess and luxury. Grrrr!
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Trash (for 1 person)
Week 26: I have no idea. More than 150 pounds, I can guarantee. But much of that weight was water.

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Consumer Goods
Week 26: I don’t know

I didn’t keep a list this week. I can’t really remember buying anything other than essentials for the lad before he went back to school. I suppose, technically, that should be on his account since none of it is in my house nor am I using any of it. I was just the Bank of Mom in this operation. So, does that really count? ;)

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Food
The pizzas the lad and I bought were definitely not local ingredients, though locally made. What a splurge. It’s been since August since the last pizza. Otherwise, even Thanksgiving Dinner was remarkably local in ingredients, aside from the Butterball turkey.

Lately, when I’ve had the stove burning, I’ve wrapped a halved sweet potato in foil (re-used many times) and placed it on a cast-iron trivet on top of the stove to bake. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour plus a few minutes, depending on how hot the stove is at the time. They’re my new favorite snack in the evenings.