I recently left the wandering lifestyle to settle (at least for a little while) in a quaint little home in Portland, ME.

There are many novel things about living in a house, and having all of my life and things in one centralized place again. There are a few things that I had forgotten about though:

1. Living in a house is expensive, and uses lots of resources.
2. It is way easier to accumulate stuff when you have a house to put it in (my trunk was only so big).

I have been trying to work on creative ways to reduce environmental impacts and costs and I thought it would be nice to have a forum to share ideas. Below I have listed a few of the ways that Ryan and I are trying to do just that.

Share your ideas in the comments below!

• Turn up the refrigerator temperature by a few degrees.
• Never put anything hot in the refrigerator.
• Turn off the hot water heater when out for the day.
• Turn off the oil burner on nice days so the electric isn’t “talking” to the heat when the heat isn’t on.
• Shower with a housemate (the hot water generally only lasts for so long so both trying to get clean before you run out of hot water could cut your shower times way down.
• Never bake only one thing at a time in the oven. If you are going to make a casserole for dinner, whip up a batch of muffins to get the most bang for your buck on oven use.
• Organize your stuff well so it become obvious when you have more things than you have homes to put them in. Then donate or sell things that don’t have a place in your house. You end up with less clutter and a little bit of cash or that warm fuzzy feeling of donating things to people who need them.