An energy-saving mum has slashed her energy bills by £120 a month thanks to her creative hacks including getting the family to participate in a ‘coffee rota’.
Mum-of-three Emma Edgley, 37, reduced her bills by £122 in September with helpful habits such as limiting how long her children spend showering and only washing up twice a day.
The savvy mum, from Harlow, has brought in a tea and coffee rota, meaning she and her teenage children only boil the kettle when asking the others if they want a drink.
She explained: “It used to be I would make a coffee and then 20 minutes later, my son would come out to make one and then my daughter might come out 10 minutes later and make one.
“Within the space of an hour, the kettle was being boiled so many times. We have a system in place now where, if someone makes a drink, they ask everybody else if they want one, so it’s not being boiled all the time. It’s a little rule that we have.”
Her children are aged 19, 17 and 10 and they live in a semi-detached bungalow in Harlow.
One previous issue she had was as her bungalow has a sloping roof, which is fifteen feet tall at the highest point, when she put the heating on it the warm air would pool at the tallest point.
But now she puts tin foil behind the radiators which she said makes a huge difference in redirecting heating up the property.
She said: “I was quite amazed. Even with the heating being on, normally it would have to be on for a good half an hour for me to even feel the warmth in my front room, but now with the tin foil behind, within 10 minutes, the room feels lovely and warm to the point I can turn the heating off.”
Emma also takes advantage of cheaper off-peak energy rates to do her clothes washing, doing one washes at 8pm and the other overnight.
She also gets cashback through the TopCashback website and was recently able to get some cashback on purchases from Argos.
The mum has invested in other energy efficiency kit including more draught excluders for all the doors and efficient lightbulbs for all the rooms – although she uses candles to light her rooms at night to avoid putting the lights on.
She also has thermal curtains which she currently draws at about 4pm when it starts to get dark, to retain heat within the property.
Another surprise item which has slashed her bills was changing her hoover. She hoovers te home twice a day as she looks after rescue animals, and previously had a larger plug-in hoover.
But she found it as much cheaper using a battery-powered device. She said: “I switched to a battery hoover that I can use for about three days, twice a day.
“That uses less electricity to charge that battery than it would using the big hoover twice a day.”
The family also uses an air fryer instead of the oven, with Emma saying her children prefer this as “it’s so much quicker” than the oven.
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