apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

OK, my electricity bill is about 12/month. And I bathe and wash my clothes.

mine is about 12 too, and that's with having a light on (cfl) whenever I leave the house. I do unplug my kitchen appliances though. Is 12 bucks a month a lot for 1 person?

$12 is awesome! However, my bill is around $70-80. But I live in a 2 level, 2 bedroom, 2 bath townhouse so I'm not never going to have it as good as when I was living in a small studio.

I think the only thing I don't do on that list is unplug my electronics when I leave the room.

Wow... $12/month?? Our bill is $150/month. We (my bf and I) use 400-500 kWH/month.

Our electricity rates are insane. Last year it broke $200 for quite a few months, when gas was nearing $5/gal.

Mine is about $36/month unless it's a cold month, then it goes over $100 (electric baseboard heat or portable electric oil heaters) - I don't pay for water and laundry is in a communal laundry room.

How in the world do you people have such low electric bills?? Do you live in your homes or just visit them for sleeping?

Seriously, my customer charge on my electric bill is 12 dollars. Then my green power switch charge (we pay more for wind/solar power) is 16 dollars. Then we have taxes and fees. My bill would be about 35 dollars before i used any electricity. In the winter (we have gas heat) our bill is about 70 dollars and in the summer with the electric ac it is around 150 dollars. We do have a house though and not an apartment.

We had a $12/mo electric bill once upon a time- we were living in a 1-bd in a 1920's brick apartment building that included heat and hot water in the rent. We didn't have a dishwasher or A/C, and there was no washer or dryer- just a super creepy laundry room in the basement. This is hardly luxe living, but lack of W/D is a huge saver, as is free heat and hot water!

So yeah, $12 electric bills are possible- but are you willing to give up your creature comforts to have them?

Our bills are around $80, but about $40 of that is a minimum charge. I would LOVE to have $12 bills!

Yep, my usage charge for my electric bill is usually between $13-18. I have a three bedroom house, have a hot shower everyday, and use hot water for my laundry about half the time.
I think Real Simple (and a lot of other writers/bloggers/journalists) didn't properly research their facts. The average household is not going to save $12 a month by switching to a low flow showerhead, even if there were ten people living in the house.
I'm chalking the Real Simple article up to yet another example of poorly researched "green" ideas getting published just because it's a trendy topic, and not because the article was useful or well researched.

Good list if you have an electric water heater... Gas is much more common where I live.

During the summer my electric is only $20-$25 a month. I don't do anything special, just try to use the central air/AC as little as possible.

During the winter however... it runs me almost $100 to heat my little one bedroom. And that's with keeping the heat low and turning it off during the day.

I'm venturing a guess that the 1st respondents have their heat and hot water provided by their landlord?
I live in a 750 sqft 1BR in Chicago and am pretty conservative about the electric and still pay about $28/mo. My heat and hot water are provided by the landlord, so my big expenditures are electronics and my dear sweet dishwasher (which I recently stopped using the pre-wash cycle and 'hot start' and the dishes come out just as clean even thought its always packed to the gills - I just wish, one day, to get 'green'/phosphate free dishwasher soap that is worth a darn... *sigh*).

I live in a suburb of Chicago in a 1000 sq/ft apartment, i pay for everything and my electric bill is 200/mo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Showerhead and laundry would not affect your bills in most apartments.
And judging by those outlets, fleeing the country is also recommended?

One of the biggest changes you can make is shutting off the computer when it's not being used. I used to leave mine on 24/7/365, when it was really only being used for around two hours per day. I instantly saw a $10-15 drop in my bill.

As far as the hot water stuff, we are tankless gas so the above will save on our gas bill, not our electric bill.

It is frustrating here in Ontario that the bulk of the bill seems to be delivery and debt charges as opposed to actual usage - makes it hard to get motivated to conserve when you are only able to reduce the amount of a small fraction of your bill.

You know what stinks? When you do everything you can to be energy conserving but you still get the short end of the stick and have to pay for your neighbors hall lights, the exterior house lights AND the basement lights - which we don't even get to utilize since the first two apartments have filled it up with their junk!
Oh and we have to pay for the water booster for the whole house! Geez, I need to get a new apartment. Our bill is still only @20 a month though.

I usually pay no more than $30 (including taxes and surcharges) in the summer and usually about $18 in the winter (I have radiators but a window AC unit for the summer). Then again, I do live in a studio, without a washer and dryer or dishwasher. However, there was a great bit of news back last fall, customers got a $170 credit (approved by the governor) that carries over from month to month. I haven't paid anything since September and I still have a $11 credit remaining!

I have a window air conditioner and I try to save money in the summer by turning the thing off when I'm at work and leaving the windows open instead and I use the energy saver function when I sleep. I also try to keep the sucker on 77 or 78 degrees. I guarantee if I kept it on 74 I'd definitely be paying a couple more bucks here and there.

sagekitten85, 0.44 cents/kWh is alot. Here in Texas my plan offers rates as low as 0.13 cents/kWH. I would shop around for providers if I were you.

Heh mine is .47 cents/kWh through comed, I don't think i can shop around since i'm living in an apartment.

Plus I need to get weatherstripping for my apartment because I have 3 rooms and these 3 rooms have sliding doors instead of windows. I can see the air coming in and out through the blinds....So my heat is on constantly.

No one from Europe yet? I own a 45sq.m (about 450 sq.ft) apartment in France, pay €15 base rate for electricity and only about €12/month in usage. I took the option for cheaper kWh rates (which costs a bit more in the base rate but works out depending on usage) and pay about 0.10 euro-cents per kWh during the day, from 6:30am to 10:30pm, and then 0.07 euro-cents per kWh at night. My water heater runs at night, and I always run the washing machine during lower-rate hours.

That said, heating isn't electric -- our apartment building has central heating, with a gas boiler. Air conditioning isn't very widespread here in personal homes; people just open their windows and close their shutters after about 11am in the summer (this is why shutters here have vents -- hot sunlight out, cool breezes in!).

oops, classic "cents" error there: 10 euro-cents and 7 euro-cents (otherwise it's 0.10 and 0.07 euros, obviously). The option without the lower-rate hours charges 0.10 euros/kWh at all times, but -- if I recall correctly -- has a base rate of €10/month for a similar-sized place. (Base rates depend on home size and electrical appliances installed/used.)

Switching to European receptacle and switch; priceless.

Deirdre, if your landlord pays for hot water and you have a conventional dishwasher (i.e. one that takes hot water from the tap rather than heating it internally) you come out ahead. Also, using the dishwasher uses less energy (and water) overall than handwashing (for a full load, obviously).

When I bought my condo I ripped out 2 eight-foot and 2 four-foot baseboard units and replaced them with 2 small square units. It made a huge difference. I do run the dishwasher about twice a week, but only for plates and utensils - the pots and pans get washed nightly by hand. We keep the heat off in the bedroom, and on in the main room (our one bedroom condo has only the bedroom and about 600 sq ft of "common space" - an open kitchen with bar, living room and "dining" space). Still, with base fees (huge in Seattle) our bill runs about $100 a month. I insist on keeping the main room a comfy temperature when it's cold (I grew up in a house where we had to wear sweaters and socks all the time cuz my parents wouldn't keep the heat about 58 deg) - which is about 8-9 months out of the year. In the summer we turn it off. So during those months the bills are about $35.

I hang dry about 75 percent of what I wash, but I don't know how much energy that saves. My clothes are less wrinkly, at least.

ChristopherPaulLopez: There is only one provider where I live. (I guess that's why the rate is so high!)

I live in an apartment with heat and hot water included. No question, these tips don't apply to everyone.