Changing My Habits to Save Money and Gas

Since the price of gas is insanely high right now, I have begun to think of ways to cut down on driving anywhere and cutting back other expenses as well. This is just a quick list of money-saving ideas.

First of all I'm going to start a worm compost bin. I figured I could get rid of about half of my total trash eash week by feeding tables scraps and newspapers to the worms. This helps me out a lot because I have to take my trash to the dump once a week which is about 8 miles roundtrip. By using the compost bin I can cut my dump visits in half each month. Another obvious benefit of a worm bin is free fertilizer for the garden. From what I can understand vermicompost (worm poop) is probably the best fertilizer on the planet. Sounds like a great deal to me.

I have decided to build a couple of solar window heaters for my house. I have done a lot of research on this subject and found out that an average size solar window heater can increase the temperature of a 10' x 10' room by at least 10 degrees in 30 minutes on a 30 degree day. Now these figures I found aren't from professionals, but average people who have built these heaters on their own and posted the figures online. The heater isn't that difficult to build even for someone who isn't a handyman or handywoman. I have started to build one already and it's very easy and only took me an hour to build it halfway through so far. Using a couple of these in southern facing windows in winter will definitely help cut down on electricity usage.

Adding some skylights to my house will definitely cut down on electricity. The way our house is situated we usually have the lights on most of the day every day because we don't get a lot of sunlight on the front side of the house. I'm thinking of adding two or three to my living room, two in the master bedroom and one in the kitchen.