Frugal Living: Living without Air Conditioning in the Summer?

Lizzie Tyner | RSS | Sat, Jun 06 2009 | 8 Comments

I recently read an article about saving money during the summer by not running your air conditioner. While I will probably not even try this one, I wanted to share it with some of you guys to see if any of you are brave enough to try it.

The story from the article is that the author hadn’t used the air conditioner in two summers and it was fairly easy to adjust to the change.

The tips are to turn off the a/c (obviously), when you’re spending time outdoors, you are doing so in the shade, do not even turn on the air conditioner in the car, and avoid places that have air conditioners so that you won’t throw off all the adjusting your body has done. The author says that your body will adjust to a certain level of heat and will do whatever it can to keep you cooled as long as you’re drinking plenty of liquids and doing other things to keep yourself cool.

Stay indoors during the hottest part of the day, but stay outside in the shade is one of the tips I didn’t understand at first, then the article went on to say that there are ways to keep your house cooler in the daytime as long as certain measures are taken at night to help your house out the next day. The author suggests getting up in the morning and closing all the windows and doors and to cover them with a heavy shade or black out drape.

Another tip to keeping the house cool is to use less electricity from inside appliances as possible. I will say, in the summer I try to do laundry at night and use a toaster oven to cook when I can to help keep the house cool. This author goes as far as to say don’t dry your clothes in the dryer at all, cook outside on the grill, and use ceiling fans in a counter clockwise direction.

At the end of the day, open all the windows to let in cooler air. I would have a serious problem doing this. Where I live, there are too many different kinds of bugs that can get into my house from the windows, even the windows with screens on them.

The author of the article claims that they were able to save between $60 and $150 a month on their electric bill. Like I said, that is a big reduction in the cost of electricity, but I don’t personally think I could do it for an entire summer. Good luck to anyone that may want to try though!

Related posts:
Frugal living tip 2: Coupon clipping is for everyone
What does it really cost to own a home?

Tags: different kinds, two summers, toaster oven