So after freaking out last month when the power bill came in and resolving to save energy, I was excited to get this month’s power bill (that’s got to be a first, excited about a bill!).

To be honest, having just gone through the coldest couple of weeks so far this year, I didn’t hold out much hope of having been successful with my energy saving efforts, because of the weather we’ve had to have both the heat pump and the drier on much more than normal.

So anyway, I have quite pleasantly surprised to find that our power bill was less this month than it had been last month.  Our electricity consumption went from 1,217 kWh for 29 days last month to 1,009kWh for 33 days this month, saving $43.22, so I was pretty chuffed with myself.

The main things I did were:

• Turn the spa pool off (my husband tried to convince me that it wouldn't really cost much to run, I'm calling him on that as the power bill suggests otherwise)
• Do the laundry on cooler wash cycles
• Be vigilant about turning lights and heaters off when not in the room
• Turn down the heat pump 2 degrees (although I’ve noticed that someone in our household keeps changing it back up, ahem! And I don’t think it’s the 2 year old)
• Closed all the curtains and blinds as soon as I got home from work to keep the heat of the day in
• Make a conscious effort to air the house out a bit at the weekends

Unfortunately though, to counter act the electricity savings our gas bill went up quite a bit. The only thing that runs on gas is our hot water. I’m guessing that with it being so cold it probably takes a bit more effort to heat the water, so I’m not too worried about that just yet, will see how it looks next month.

So boosted by my success this month, and because I still think our bills are too high, I want to try and get it down even more next month. I’ve noticed that the bathroom light that we leave on all night is not an energy efficient bulb so I’m going to try and replace that if I can, plus see where else I can put more efficient bulbs in. I’m really trying to think of more things I can do to save power (and money but after looking at the Energywise website, I actually don’t think I’m doing too badly after all. I think it’s more a matter of being aware of what and when you’re using power and being mindful about turning things off.

If you have any suggestions about any little things I can do, I’d love to hear them! Just comment below.

This post was first published on Nested and is republished with permission.

The information contained in this article is of a general nature and should not be taken as advice. It reflects the opinions of the writer only and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of New Zealand Home Loans.