Eliminate Vehicle Idling to Save Gas and Emissions
As winter progresses, I find it more and more difficult to simply get out of bed and jump into my car to go to work everyday. As it progressively is getting colder every day, I try to make sure to warm my car up a little before I can head out on the road. The only problem with this is that the longer I leave my car idle, the more emissions my car emits. The question that most people as well as I have is what is the appropriate time to warm a car up before driving in cold temperatures?
No Starting Necessary?
As much of a surprise as this may seem to many, modern cars do not require any warming at all before driving in cold temperatures. My father always told me to start up my car before I head out onto the road to allow for its oil and other engine lubricants to flow better. This may apply to older cars that are more prone to sludge build up, but modern cars are better suited to handle this. Idling is not the most effective way of heating your car anyways, driving it is. As soon as I begin to drive my car, I always notice that it heats up much more quickly than just sitting their while it idles. Also, allowing it to idle for excessive amounts of time can actually build up more gunk in your engine. On top of that you are just wasting gas and emitting unnecessary carbon emissions.
How about Frost?
It seems like the two main reason most people warm their cars in the cold is either because of frost or for their personal comfort. A better method may be to wear warming clothes into your car and only allow your car to idle for up to 30 seconds. Also, use a scraper instead of warming your car up to get rid of that pesky frost.
Turn Your Engine Off
When you are running into a store for a quick second or stuck in tons of traffic with no movement in sight, it is not always the best idea to let your car running. For every two minutes you let your car idle is equivalent to driving your car 1 mile. The only difference, you are not moving at all. If you are going into a store, there is no reason to leave you car running. You put your car at risk to being stolen as well as wasting gas. This seems like the obvious choice to turn off your car, but most people feel completely different about turning their cars off in traffic. The biggest worry of most is that turning your car off and on can lead to lots of wear on your car. This is the furthest thing from the truth. Restarting your car uses less fuel than leaving your car idle for under 10 seconds. Also, your engine is not negatively affected by frequent restarts and the parts associated with starting a vehicle are inexpensive to replace.
Just remember these facts the next time you go to start your car when it is freezing outside or completely stopped in traffic. There is no need to emit more carbon emissions than we currently already do and it could also save you a little on your fuel expenses.
Last Minute Christmas Shopping Tips
This is the most hectic shopping time of the year and it only continues to get worse as we approach Christmas. Whether you forgot a gift for somebody or you procrastinate and didn’t buy anything yet, there are ways to avoid the massive crowds of angry shoppers. Not only can you save time and money, but indirectly go green while doing so.
Donate to a Charity
A gift that most people can appreciate is to make a donation on behalf of friend, family member or spouse. This could include having a tree planted in your community, providing for a local community effort or finding their favorite charity to donate to. This is a win-win situation. It will not only make the person feel good, but you are giving to a worth cause.
Overnight It
I discussed this an article I previously wrote about saving money and time on Black Friday, why not just shop online. Since Thursday is fast approaching, there is still time to either have anything purchased shipped with either two-day shipping or have it overnighted. There is going to be a premium, but both in my opinion are better than going to a local mall to shop. You can probably offset most simply on the cost of gas that you would use sitting in traffic and fighting for parking spots. Most online stores are accommodating and will ship items immediately to ensure they arrive by Wednesday.
Go at Off Hours
Hit the stores at off hours to avoid hitting heavy traffic times of the day. At this time of year, the only good time is to go immediately when the stores open. This will save you many headaches and hours of trying to find a parking spot.
Re-gift
Why not? It saves you time and you can get rid of those gifts that you don’t want anymore. It will also ensure that items are put to good use and not simply thrown in your basement. Just make sure to not re-gift a present to the person that gave it to you.
Give a Hug
If all else fails, you can just let the person know that they are a good friend or spouse and you simply forgot. The only problem with this plan is you may get some grief and some lonely nights on the couch.
Quick Savings Tip: Safe and Effective Household Cleaners
With all the cleaning products available, how do you know which ones to use in your household. There are many people that have small children that should not be exposed to harmful cleaners, especially at such a young age. There are other solutions than buying harmful cleaning products. Make you own.
With the use of lemon juice, baking soda, vinegar, water and many other basic ingredients around the house, you can make a number of different cleaners that will solve many of your household cleaning problems. I have heard of using vinegar to clean windows, but I never knew there were so many practical and safe cleaners that can be made at home. Why go out and spend a fortune on different cleaning products when you can make them at home with common products you can find in your home that are inexpensive. One common mixture involves including baking soda with water to form a paste that not only is extremely safe, but is highly effective on many surfaces.
There are too many to list here so check out the entire list of environmentally safe household cleaners. I am going to try some of these to replace some of the cleaners that I have in my house. Please share your experience with any these safe household cleaners.
Quick Saving Tip: Shorter Showers
When I was a kid, I would constantly hear my mom tell me I need to stop wasting so much water and take shorter showers. She would also use the fact that it costs so much to shower as a point to get me out of the shower. I now take showers around 5 minutes as it is not about the money, but more about conserving water. I will go further into how much money and water you can actually save by cutting your shower time down.
I first needed to find the average cost of water to begin my calculation of which I found was $2.00 per 1000 gallons. The next number I need was the number of gallons of water the average shower head uses per minute. This number was readily available on a number of sites and is 2.5 gallons per minute. I used these two numbers to figure out how much you would be save by showering 1 less minute.
That means that you an save a half of a penny for each minute you shower less. This doesn’t seem like a lot, but it can add up.
So that means you can save a little over $9 per year if you cut back on showering 5 minutes less in the shower per day. That doesn’t seem like a large savings, but you also have to consider the amount of water you are also saving. You will also be saving over 4500 gallons of water per year.
