Saving Energy Tips

I will devote a series of posts to saving energy tips, with this being the first, I use to reduce my inefficient consumption of energy.  As a result, the benefits are twofold in that I help make my personal contribution towards saving this beautiful planet we’ve been blessed to live on and saving money as well.

My first tip starts in the shower and ends in the laundry room.  I live in America that has so much abundance that one might ask why should we even care about reducing our energy consumption.  I believe we should live even in today’s age more like it’s native inhabitants to take and use only what we need especially with a growing population.

Military/California Shower

I served in the Army, but believe it or not, I don’t ever remember a time that our leadership encouraged us to take a military shower.  I just came to know the term, but I started doing this to conserve energy.  Not only is it smart, but it’s practical.  Typically when we take a shower the water comes on and usually doesn’t go off until we get out.

I suggest some small changes to that routine behavior.  A military shower is to warm the water, get in and get wet and then turn off the water. Then lather up.  Once we’ve touched all those hot spots, then turn water back on to rinse off.  The California part of this shower was because my cousin mentioned that during droughts in California, they had to conserve water.  So, they would place a bucket to catch that initial water during warming.  It would then be used to water flowers and bushes later.  I thought this is a fantastic idea which plenty of my readers could also easily do to conserve too.

Two Hand Towels System

Two hand towels can extend use of big towels before wash and in turn save energy and money.  The two hand towels are used as follows:

• Body, Underarms, Genitalia, and Orifice (top down)
• Total body, non-orifice, and wipe down

One hand towel works initially as the towel to wash top down the body and hot spots starting with under arms, genitalia, and the booty last.  Next, the other hand towel is for all the body again minus the booty.  This towel is also used to wipe off the excess water on skin prior to exiting shower.

Wipe Off Excess Water

To wipe off excess is important as if this is done you will not saturate you big dry off towel with water which is usually the reason for frequent replacement because mildew smell sets in.

After wiping off excess water, the skin should barely be damp

Next, ensure the hand towels are wrung out well and hung to dry.  Separate the towel for the booty aside from other towel as it will go to laundry basket first.  The next day shower gets one new hand towel and yesterday’s wipe down towel becomes today’s underarms, genitalia, and booty towel. The new towel is non-orifice and wipe down towel.  We also use our same big towel from yesterday as it’s probably not even damp.  I usually go Monday – Thursday with same big towel using this process and washing on Sunday.

Note: This is for demonstration and towels are clean and have just been dampened for effect

Energy and Money Savings

What we save energy-wise

• Water
• Heat
• Electricity

What we save money-wise

• Less soap needed
• Less shampoo
• Reduction in detergent
• Longer useful life of washer/dryer

The Best Green Personal Hygiene Products

This reduction you can imagine goes all the way back to reductions for producers of these resources.

The Difference

Look below at the pile of laundry for towels at week’s end for me (one person) and compare to a pile if the typical person uses a hand towel and big towel everyday for showering.  Then extrapolate how much more water, heat, and soap will need to be used.  You can in turn directly see the energy and money savings if you use less of all the above.  This is for one person, so imagine for a family.

15 hand towels used effectively is only equivalent to 1 large towel

You may not care about saving energy use, which I hope is not the case, but if you care about saving money consider incorporating these small efficient changes to your lifestyle.  It is better for us and our planet that we try to skew towards using its resources as efficiently as we can and what do you know it helps us keep more of our dollars.