As parents, I feel that it is our responsibility to teach our kids good conservation efforts. My twelve year old daughters are already aware of many of the conservation efforts we take in our house to keep costs down. I am just beginning to teach my three year old about conserving energy. While I’m certain he doesn’t have the concept down yet, now is the best time to start teaching him.
One of the easiest things to teach a child is to turn off the lights after they leave a room. I can remember as a child the words “turn off the light” even in the 70’s way before energy conservation had really taken hold. How about when your kids are brushing their teeth, do you remind them to turn the water off since it really isn’t necessary to have it on the entire time their brushing their teeth?
My daughters aren’t doing the laundry yet, but they do know that I don’t wash a load of laundry or run the dishwasher unless I have a full load. Knowing the rule in advance keeps me from doing one little piece of laundry that they must absolutely wear the next day.
I also wash the majority of our laundry on cold water unless I feel that it needs to be washed on warm because of some particular dirty piece of laundry. Washing my clothes on cold water doesn’t seem to change the effectiveness of the laundry detergent. My clothes still get clean and smell great after I’ve dried them. Tide actually has a product designed to wash your clothes just as effectively in cold water. I still use whatever laundry soap I find on sale, but I found it interesting that Proctor & Gamble would go so far as to create a detergent specifically designed to wash clothes in cold water. Go P&G! I’ve never been a fan of Tide, but please wash your clothes in whatever detergent you feel adequately cleans your clothes and keeps them looking as good as new.
On occasion I will get the request, “can we go to Redbox to rent a movie?” from my daughters, and my usual answer is, “I don’t have any other errands to run tonight so it will have to wait for another day.” If Redbox were less than a mile from my house, I might consider going to get a movie without making any other stops, but the closest Redbox to my house is more than 3 miles away. No, I don’t win the “Mean Mom Award” for telling them no since most of the time they are asking it is on a school night and we don’t have time to watch a movie in the evening anyway.
I posted an article regarding Phantom Loads about a month ago now, and since learning about them, I have been diligent in unplugging devices that I previously have left plugged in. My son has a night light and a sound machine in his bedroom that I unplug in the morning after he wakes up. I also make sure my flat iron and hair dryer are unplugged after I’ve used them. I know these won’t be radical changes reflected on my electric bill, but all the tiny little changes will add up eventually.
The last thing on conserving energy is regarding ceiling fans. While they do cost electricity to run, the cost is far less than running the air conditioner. To keep things cooled off, we instinctively run to turn the air conditioner down when we should run to turn the ceiling fan on. I’m not saying that I sit in my house and bake, but I do like to try the ceiling fan first and if that doesn’t work then air conditioner here I come. There are more things that you can teach your kids, but this is just a start and things that will probably stick with them for the rest of their life.
