Minimizing electricity use

I'm slipping in late here, but still wanted to blog on the climate change blog action day.

When we first came to North America, I was astonished at the proliferation of lighting in hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. It's admirable that some of the latter at least are making some sort of gesture towards a lower level of lighting, but you still see lots of artificial illumination even in places where there's plenty of daylight.

However, what I'm doing these days is trying to be mindful of the small things that add up to unnecessary use of electricity in the home. The thing is, every little tiny light that shines uses power. Think about the smoke alarm, the illuminated digital clock on your stove, same kind of thing on your micro-wave if you have one, even your toaster perhaps and so on and so on. Some of these, of course, shouldn't be switched off, but others certainly can. We actually have a printer for our computer that needs to stay on, and yes, shines a light. I would never have bought that if I'd known.

So I do what I can. If I need to recharge the battery on my laptop, I make sure to unplug at the wall when it's done, otherwise the current continues to flow. Same with our cell phone. Our son has gone one better. He charges his cell in the car via the cigarette lighter. This lead was ordered on line, and I think that's a good idea.

I make sure to shut the door of our drier so the light doesn't shine to no purpose, and of course to switch off lights when we're out of the room. I'm sure there are other things, but these are what came to mind when I started to think about how we live today. In future I'd love to be greener, and to make more use of solar power. Hopefully that will happen.

This probably doesn't add up to a whole lot, but I'm sure that every little bit of saving has to count. And if I'm using electricity, I try to remind myself to be grateful.