90 Percent Project - Week 32

It’s that time again—for my weekly values for Week 32 (January 3-10, AM meter readings) of the 90 Percent Project.

Electricity
Week 32: 26 kWh used

This represents the first full week that the lad has been home with all of his electricity guzzling stuff. The first day of the accounting week set my hair on end from the shock of it. We used a lot of electricity. Well, a lot for this household...5 kWh. I asked the lad to please try to conserve a little bit. He did make an effort and the next day our use dropped to 4 kWh. Still too high, in my opinion. So, I made a deal with him.

If he could drop it another kilowatt hour per day, I’d plug the refrigerator back in. Of all the things in the house that he misses the most, it’s the fridge. He wasn’t all that opposed to going out on the deck to forage for food for himself, but when his friends had to do the same when they came over, he started not liking it quite so much. It seems to get a little tiring having to explain to them exactly why it is that his Mom has two refrigerators in the kitchen and neither is plugged in.

Plugging in the small fridge was a worthwhile goal for him. It took a couple of days, but he managed to pull his use down until our daily total was slightly under 3 kWh and I did plug the fridge back in. It’s all about trade-offs, I said. He uses a little less electricity for his entertainment, without any significant pain, so that he can have cold food and drinks in a refrigerator. Most of what he reduced in electricity use was waste, though he also decided to swap out a light bulb in his room for a much lower wattage CFL bulb. Having the fridge plugged in satisfies his requirement for civilized living and it’s worth the effort to be more careful with his other use. We’ve peeled our baseline use back to 3 kWh per day with the fridge plugged in. Some days will be slightly more when I do a load of laundry.

Well, yes, I’d like to peel it back more, but I think this is a realistic baseline, given that the lad didn’t sign on to this project. He’s being extremely agreeable about it and, in the main, supports the effort. He doesn’t appear to be suffering, so I think this is a good baseline to work from. I’m not willing to push it further at this point.

_________________

Gasoline purchased (for 2 people)
Week 32: 4.848 gallons

This was not a fill-up owing to gadding about town and environs. It was a simple replacement for what the mechanics burned up last week while trying to sort my car’s emissions system out. Oh the irony. In order to make my car’s engine less lean, they had to burn up a half a tank of gas...letting off as much in emissions as I’ll probably save with the repairs for the next three or four months.

_________________

Water (for 2 people)
Week 32: 299.24 gallons

The general toilet flushing rule in this house is the old “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” Works quite well for the two of us. However, when the friends come over, that’s a different story. And I’ve had a rather continuous flow of young people in the house over the past week. They all seem to arrive with a full bladder, too. And they flush. And flush. And flush. What are ya gonna do? I’d be tarred and feathered if I announced the little ditty governing toilet flushing. Think what fun it would be if I had a composting toilet!

_________________

Natural Gas
Week 32: 5 CCF

The snow and ice melted. I have no excuses for not reading the danged meter. We’re using more hot water, obviously. Though the lad manages to keep his showers short, it still kicks the water heater on halfway through his shower. Ah well. I have great expectations for spring, when the town water warms up. It’s so cold right now that it numbs my fingers. Takes a lot of energy just to heat it up to room temperature, say nothing of bearable shower temperatures.

Not entirely related to natural gas...but sort of...I learned something, this week, that I never knew before. Almost to a person, the lad’s friends walk through the door and immediately say, “Oh it’s so nice and warm in here.” They want to sit by the wood stove for a few minutes before venturing upstairs. It’s not that I keep the house hot or anything, but the wood stove produces an even and steady heat. There are no cold pockets in the house. It just feels warmer, even though the house temps generally stay around 68° in the evenings, though much colder during the day.

I mentioned that to the lad and he said, “Why do you think we hang out here? Everyone else’s house is freezing. There’s no place to get warm. It’s awful.”

I did not realize that. It’s sort of funny. Back when I first installed the stove, a number of his friends thought it was a rather strange thing to heat one’s house with a wood stove. Why do that when one could turn a dial on a thermostat? Twentieth century technology, baybee. Use it. I think their perception back then was that only poor people heated with wood and that seemed to be quite out of the ordinary in an affluent town like this one. With that perception came all sorts of weird baggage. But, as other parental units responded to high energy prices and thermostats started being set lower and lower, the kids made a radical discovery. Wood heat is really, really nice. It’s cozy. It’s even. It’s...luxurious. Funny how perceptions change. It kind of cracks me up to see them pile into the living room and huddle around the stove to soak up some much appreciated warmth.

__________________

Trash (for 2 people)
Week 32: 4.6 lbs.

Surprisingly little trash this week. It wasn’t an intentional effort, just seemed to work out that way. That’s probably a good sign.

_________________

Consumer Goods
Week 32: $0

_________________

Food
For the better part, I’ve still maintained the 100 mile food rule. We did have one meal that was way outside those boundaries, though...the one the lad cooked for me. It’s another one of those things...you can’t beat someone over the head with a new way of doing things all at once. It is, I think, a learning process. When we went grocery shopping, we discussed it and evaluated some of the produce that he wanted to get. We compromised and I’m okay with that. It is interesting, though, that he much prefers the flavors of the foods I’ve been getting at the farmer’s market. And he’s been totally ruined for grocery store milk. In fact, that was one of the first things he looked for when he came home for vacation...that bottle of local pasteurized milk.