Doing our part to stay green. Something we’ve been wanting to do in our house for awhile: get rid of standard lightbulbs in favor of CFL bulbs which use up to 75% less energy and last up to 10 times longer. In our home, including one outside bulb, this meant replacing 13 bulbs total. Most were 60 watt bulbs which we replaced with the 13 watt CFL bulbs. We’re giving the replaced incandescant bulbs away to our neighbor.

At a savings of $38/year per bulb this equals $494 a year. But the first year we need to factor out the cost of the bulbs which have really come down in price. A package of six CFL bulbs at Wal-mart cost $15.16 + tax (my wife informed me after publishing that the 6-pack of CFL bulbs was on sale for $9.88) and the bulbs advertised to last with regular usage 5 years.

Not going to start a daily countup like we’ve done for ridding our family of television and credit cards, but it is in the same spirit.

Next thing we’re considering doing is adding wireless outlet plugs so that we can conveniently power off devices that are left plugged in and not being used. Any other good energy saving, money saving ideas to share?