An Update on the Electricity Experiment, Some Links, and My New Business

It's been kind of busy around here!  Here's what's been happening...

Electricity Experiment:
I have been watching our electricity consumption like a hawk this past week and unfortunately it looks like our super high electricity bill I blogged about a while back was our own fault.  We were pretty spoiled by Washington's electricity rates (plus by having a house that used natural gas as well which is much cheaper than electricity).  After reading our meter daily for the past week, we have a much better handle on how we ended up with such a high bill and a much better idea of ways that we can conserve electricity.  Here's the results of our meter reading:

• January 21--used 21 kwh (didn't use heat but did one load of laundry and baked)
• January 22--used 18 kwh (used the heat pump/central heat to heat the place)
• January 23--used 17 kwh (used space heaters to heat the place)
• January 24--used 23 kwh (did one load of laundry and used the space heaters)
• January 25--used 13 kwh (no cooking, no laundry, and only used the space heater for about 30 minutes)

So yes, the bill was probably correct as it showed that we averaged about 30 kwh per day.  Now because we are paying attention to our electricity used we are able to keep it at an average of about 20 kwh per day so we are hoping our next bill will be about 30% lower!  Tonight we should have higher usage because I plan to bake some granola, bake a pizza for dinner, and do about three loads of laundry so we will keep checking our meter each day probably for the next month or so and hopefully still be able to average about 20 kwh per day.

Links:
Here's some links you might enjoy...

• How we paid cash for our first home (this family rocks!)
• 1000 days after overnight success (some excellent business tips)
• Lists of note (I just came across this website and I LOVE lists so thought this was cool)
• A cash mob for a small town store (I LOVE this town! What a great thing to do for a small business!)
• Success books (I was feeling a bit aimless and needing some inspiration so I am now reading down my list of favorite success books which I listed here on my other blog)

My New Business:
I have been thinking abouts some business ideas (to me a real job seems like a prison sentence...I am much happier as a business owner) and since my friends moved down here recently and are in need of work, I have decided on a new business that I plan to start within the next month or so.  My friend's husband is a handyman/painter/all around useful guy and he has been working on and off doing carpet cleaning.  We talked about the idea of him having his own carpet cleaning business and after doing some research it looks like this would be a low cost (about $3000) kind of business to get started and once the machine is paid off, his only expense would be the carpet cleaning chemicals.  I will do a bit more research before I commit to this but I have done similar businesses in the past (started businesses for friends then sold the business to the person after a while) and it has worked out well.  I'll let you know how this goes.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week!
p.s. It's near 70 degrees and sunny this week in Las Vegas.  I think this is the best January we have ever experienced--nice weather will do that for a person.