Well, I’m taking a breather from the Olympics postings and onto something more mundane—home utilities.:)
There are two Excel spreadsheets I keep and update on a daily basis. One is for the latest toys and gadgets, and the other is for home accounting. It’s sort of fun to see Ling’s reactions to both. If she sees a spreadsheet opened for “Computers / Cameras”, she’ll remark wryly in amusement, “OK he’s thinking of yet another toy again”. When it’s for home accounting, she’ll cringe a little and wait for me to give my succinct yet always final assessment, e.g. “Dear, we’re spending too much on electricity. No more baking!!!” :)
But seriously, as unbelievable as this may sound, my numbers-peering over utilities at least has as much to do with wanting to do my small little bit for Green Earth as it has on wanting to always be very clear of our financial standing at all times. There’s a sort of burden I’ve been experiencing for the last year now about how we’re carelessly wasting our natural resources on this Earth we’ve been blessed with.
Ok, so at times I’m hypocritical since I sure spend quite a bit on camera equipment, and I’m not a habitual recycler. So I’m referring specifically to those things about energy wastage. E.g. turning off lights when we’re not using them. Or not wasting food. Or planning the times when we cook so we buy food condiments and items on demand and need, instead of stocking them up and then throwing them away when their by-use dates expire.
One of those things we’re really thankful for too is that our bedroom faces a park, and there’s a cooling breeze on most nights. As a result, the air-conditioning for our bedroom is rarely switched on. Like maybe once every 2 months for 5 minutes, and only because Ling thinks it’s a good idea to switch it on once in a while to “keep the motor alive”. :)
The sum of it is that on the 23-24th of every month when I get the utilities bill, there’s a little sense of accomplishment when I see how much our household utility expenditure is compared to the average Singapore household, even if there’re just two of us with no children yet. The chart above shows the sort of spreadsheet-nut I’ve become, and for those so inclined our per-day utilities cost on a monthly basis.:)
I nearly cringed when I first began to read this post. I thought by looking at the graph that I’d see an overwhelming leap in used resources around the time I stayed at your place, but thankfully it’s not nearly as bad as I expected. Were rates higher in November of ’07 or is that generally just a period where there’s more activity in the household?
I’m glad you don’t have a chart depicting the number of green tea soft drink beverages consumed.
Hehe.:) Nah; the per day usage is actually remarkably consistent throughout the year, and should be the case unless we start buying high wattage or other heavy energy consuming devices in the house.
There’s been a couple of spikes though, e.g. the one in November. What happened during that month is a bit of a funny story. The thermostat for the aquarium chiller broke so over the course of a day, the chiller ran non-stop (the thermostat typically cuts off the chiller after 25 degree celsius). That brought the water temperature down to near zero temperatures. The fishes probably thought they had been transported to Siberia.:)
wa… u update EVERYDAY???? hm… chris turns on the air con EVERYDAY -.- so wasteful.