I’m moving in to the laundry room for some green tips this week. 

I was talking with my niece this weekend, about drying clothes, and she told me that she doesn’t always clean out her dryer vent.  While I knew this was something that should be done, I wasn’t quite sure what affect it would have, until I got home and did a little research in my “green book”.  Turns out that keeping your dryer lint screen clean can save you up to 5% on your electricity bill.  And, if everyone did it, we’d save the energy equivalent of 250 million gallons of gasoline per year.   Let’s not forget that a dirty dryer lint screen is a fire hazard, as well, so keep them clean!

When washing clothes, many of the newer front load washing machines will  start the cycle off using warm water.  While this is better than “hot”, it’s not as good as “cold”.  I wish that the engineers behind these machines would have made the “default” cycle using cold water instead!  The majority of clothes that you wash today, will do just fine in a cold water wash/rinse…trust me!  I wash everything in cold except my son’s bedding, which I wash in HOT because of his allergies.  Washing in a warm wash and cold rinse cycle, will save 90% over the energy used when machine washing in  hot water only so imagine what a cold water wash/rinse could save you.  Together all US households could save the energy equivalent to one hundred thousand barrels of oil a day by switching from hot-hot to warm-cold cycles.  I challenge you to take that one step further to cold-cold cycles.

Lastly, did you know that wrapping your water heater in an insulating blanket will help it store heat?  I bought one of these blankets at Ace Hardware this weekend, and am hopeful that the savings that I’m anticipating, will pay for this inexpensive item before the year is out.  If that happens, it will be one of the easiest investments I’ve made in a long time.   The important thing is to find one that is going to fit the size of your water heater and then they are very easy to install.  Remember that the thermostat on your water heater should be no higher than 120 degrees; this conserves energy and anything higher than that, is going to be dangerous to any children in the home.  

 So, which one of these challenges do you want to try this week?  Being consistent with cleaning out your dryer lint screen?  Washing more of your clothes in cold water, instead of hot or warm?  Purchasing a water heater blanket?  I hope you’ll give one of them, or all of them, a try and start to see that there really are so many shades of green and your shade is hopefully evolving each week! 

Until next week, think GREEN!