Partially Greener

Baby, It's Cold Inside

Crazy idea numero uno: turn the furnace off. And that's precisely what we did yesterday afternoon.

When Rory was still working in Coralville, a coworker of his was telling him that her parents don't run their furnace at all during the winter months. At first, Rory thought that was a crazy plan, but after talking with her, he learned that their big, old farmhouse never got below the mid-50 degree range, which sounds chilly, but at least tolerable.

As we talked more about it, we thought it would be fine. After all, Rory's coworker's parents lived in a big, old, leaky farmhouse and were able to live without heat. We are in a newer, EnergyStar compliant townhouse - we just needed to suck it up and switch off the heat.

So we took the plunge yesterday at approximately 2 p.m. Rory did the honors, flipping up the thermostat cover and sliding the little switch from the "heat" position to the "off" position.

By 7 p.m. we were still doing pretty well. It had only cooled down to 64 degrees and it was time to make supper, so we knew that would warm things up a degree or two.

We ate dinner on the couch, under a blanket while we watched a movie. We were coping well, but Moda (one of our dogs) felt that her winter coat was no longer cutting it, and insisted that she be let under the blanket as well.

By bed time we were still in good shape as temperatures still hadn't dipped below the 64 degree mark inside. We climbed into bed and managed to keep the dogs out, which was a success in my book.

All was good until about 6 a.m. this morning. Rory cracked. The dogs had been restless all night and he was getting cold too. He ran downstairs to find that we were at 58 degrees, and, without a bit of remorse, flipped the heat back on.

So, we're compromising. We won't go back to our old ways, keeping the house at a balmy 68 degrees, but we won't be extremists and go without heat, either. We're going to try keeping it at 64 degrees during our awake hours at home, and drop it down to the low-sixties at night. Hopefully that plan will keep the dogs out of bed and our energy consumption from being sky-high!

Partially Greener

Our household is going to become partially greener in 2008. Rory and I made our resolutions for the new year, and decided we wanted to begin living a more sustainable lifestyle. I plan to use this blog as a way to document our activities on the subject and share them with you.

There are a lot of blogs out there on being green and living sustainably, a good number of which I read. I'm hoping this one will be a bit different. Neither Rory or I profess to be experts on green living (I work in HR and Rory works in telecommunications). We're truly figuring this out as we go.

I'm looking forward to celebrating our successes and to learning from our failures. I hope you'll share in the fun and participate by challenging our views and providing us with new, exciting ideas as we attempt to live a lower-impact lifestyle.

-Andy