Oh my, holy goodness.

*I started writing this about 2 weeks ago, only to finally finish it now. 

We are living in a small house. The house belonged to my husband's maternal grandmother, she passed away a few years back. The house is amazing, quaint, 1920's, random add-ons over the years, we actually have a hard time telling what is the "original" house and what has been added on. Our bathroom was added on, hmmmm, guess they didn't have bathrooms in the 1920's. :) Well we have gas and electricity here, in the last county we lived in we just had electricity. We bought an electric clothes dryer a while back, while still living in Crescent City. The house heater is gas, it is a wall heater that does not allow heat to reach the bathroom or the kids bedroom, so we have an electric heater in the kids bedroom. We have two refrigerators running, one very old (has an actual ice-box) small (maybe 8-10 cubic feet) and then our not huge (maybe 18ish cubic feet) one that is in our laundry room. Ok then we have lights, a microwave, a small heater in the bathroom we use when we take a shower (it is like an ice box in there), a stove, a hot water heater, and on and on. But mind you we live in a house that is roughly 1000 sq feet. Do you want to guess how much our gas/electric bill was this month? Come on guess!

FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS! Are you totally joking me. That is insane.

Ok so we have uncovered some useful information. Our so-called lighting in the living room is a chandelier, it has 12 bulbs that have 40watts in each of them, so burning 480watts are burning when it is on. I got out my tape, that chandelier is not longer in use, HAHA! And we found out from my in-laws that when the house was completely vacant there was a gas/electric bill of around $70 each month. It has to be that old fridge. Cute-old-energy-sucking fridge you are UNPLUGGED! Take that!

We are being extra, extra mindful of what lights we have on, making sure we turn them off when we leave the room, unplugging items that are not in use as much as possible  and bundling up before putting the heater on.

Will our efforts be rewarded?  Will our bill take a dramatic dive?  One can only hope (and pray, HARD).