THE ULTIMATE COFFEE BREAK

Or maybe I should say the ultimate break on coffee.  I'm not normally a coffee drinker, although I have a fondness for Maxwell House International Cafe's French Vanilla flavor.  Since the beginning of the year, as part of my effort to reduce my carbon footprint, I've been trying to set the thermostat low during the day when the kids are at school (and my husband is working upstairs in his office surrounded by heat-generating computers).  I turn the thermostat down to 65 degrees when the kids leave and usually keep it there until my son comes home around 3:00.  Then it goes up to 67, sometimes to 69 depending on the amount of complaining I hear from the children.  Because it can get quite chilly in the house during the day, I find myself having one or two cups of coffee a day.  I already had a can of French Vanilla Cafe in my pantry from last year (normally my coffee consumption is very sporadic), but I was getting near the bottom and debating whether the $3.39 price tag for a new can fit in my food budget for the month.

While mulling over the decision in Meijer, I came across two sets of shelves near the milk with clearance items.  On it were cans of Maxwell House International Cafe in Peppermint Mocha Latte flavor.  They were marked down to $.84 a can.  I debated for a while.  My first instinct was to scoop up every can I saw.  However, I'd never had the flavor and was concerned I would find it undrinkable and then have bought $10 worth of coffee for nothing.  I bought two cans and tried the flavor that day.  It was wonderful!  Next morning I scurried by up to Meijer and found the shelves empty of coffee.  Apparently everybody else found it a good deal as well.  I did some excavating and managed to find two more cans hidden behind other items and quickly purchased them.

My savings went beyond this, however.  It just so happened Maxwell House was having a deal that week (I knew from the cash register-generated coupon) for a $1 coupon towards my next shopping trip if I purchased two cans of International coffee.  So, I got the $1 coupon the first day and when I bought two more the following day, I received another coupon.  That brought my $.84 can of coffee down to $.34!  Cha-ching!

Granted someone could argue, as my husband did, that I don't need coffee and even if I did choose to drink it, there were even cheaper options.  I have no delusions that I'm hitting rock bottom with my grocery budget or spending habits, but my $.34 can of coffee is a huge improvement over the regular price, to say nothing of the cost of a cup from the famous chain coffee shop just down the hill from me...

HOW TO DRY OUT

No, I'm not talking about overindulging in the Christmas spiked egg nog.  I'm speaking of laundry.

One of my goals for the month of January was to reduce our electric usage.  Part of this was financial, most was environmental.  One way to accomplish this was with reducing my dryer usage.  I normally use the dryer for all our laundry, especially in the winter.  My goal for the month of January is to reduce my dryer usage by 50%.  So far I've surpassed that goal and am feeling fairly proud.

I have a finished basement with a small unfinished area roughly 10' x 10' that houses the water heater, furnace, sump pump, freezer, and some storage shelves.  It is a quirk of our home that the basement is the warmest place in the winter.  Our first home, a split level, was warm on the highest floor, cool on the ground floor, and freezing in the lower level.   There was a good ten degree difference between upper and lower level.  In this house the upper level gets warm but so does the basement.  That's actually not a bad thing as the basement is our rumpus room holding the Wii, most of the kids' toys, t.v., and gym equipment. 

This small unfinished area is the warmest spot in the entire house.  The downside is that nobody's ever in there.  Who wants to curl up with a book on a cement floor next to a water softener?  I realized, though, that this would be the perfect place for my drying racks.  I have one wooden rack purchased from the Lehman's catalog and a tall rack purchased at Ikea.  Between the two of them I have room to hang roughly two loads of laundry.  And the space is so warm that most things dry in less than 24 hours.  Where my adjustment has been is in doing laundry every day.  If my goal is to hang the laundry I have to make sure there are enough clean clothes to last until the stuff actually dries.  I can't wash something now and have it be dry in an hour as I'm accustomed to. 

What has happened, much to my amazement, is that I haven't cut my dryer usage by 50%.  I've cut it by at least 80%!  For me that's a big accomplishment.  Some of the clothes are coming out extremely wrinkled and while I'm not the fussiest dresser in the world (my husband works from home, I'm home all day, and my kids could care less), I don't want to look like I slept in my clothes.  For the most wrinkled items, I let them get almost completely dry and then load them into the dryer and give them a 10 minute fluff.  This does not make them wrinkle-free.  It does, however, take the worst of the wrinkles out and get them to a level of smoothness that is acceptable to all concerned.



I haven't done the actual calculations to figure how much money an hour's worth of dryer usage costs, but based on some general estimates I've seen around, I figure each load not dried in the dryer saves about $.30 to $.40 in electricity costs.  While $10 a month in electricity savings alone doesn't seem like a big deal, I figure the environmental impact of the reduced electricity makes it totally worth it.  Plus, $10 is $10...