Exploring the Apartment

Doing some cleaning downstairs, looking at my rusty fridge, I figured out I spend under 15% of my income a year on rent and utilities

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Doing some cleaning downstairs, looking at my rusty fridge, I figured out I spend under 15% of my income a year on rent and utilities… 🏡

I can’t complain too much about that these days, but that’s because I still have the same run down apartment from when I first graduated 🎓 from college and I’ve made more money at work 💼 and rent increases have been fairly modest. Rent is about 14% of my income, utilities are low because I leave the heat low most of the year, don’t use air conditioning, don’t have a lot of electronics and all my light bulbs are energy efficient. 💡Granted maybe if you count my $500 a year smartphone bill that’s another half of percent 📱 but I refuse to have internet at home and take my bottles and cans to the recycling center ♻ myself rather than pay for trash pickup. 

It’s by no means my dream home – I don’t have a big backyard ⛲ or a gun range 🔫 or livestock out back 🐐 – but it’s decent enough and it’s on two bus lines 🚍 for easy commutes to work. And it’s allowing me to save for my off grid property and a secure retirement 👴 so I can enjoy better things in the future. 

I Hate Cleaning.

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One thing I hate is how much time I spend cleaning, and how unsatisfactory my results often are. It’s really hard to keep up with dust and dirt, I track a lot of it coming back in from the woods and wilderness. Soap scum and dust build up on everything. It helps when I remember to leave a few hours each week to do some cleaning, but it’s still difficult to keep up.

When I eventually own land and an off-grid house, I am going to go for hardened tile and other “bare” floors that I can sweep, scrape, and wash the mud and muck off of. I might try to take my boots off more before coming inside, and make sure to have and use a muck scraper near my door, but I’m sure it will still come in.

Riding the Excerise Bike.

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I find myself riding the exercise bike more and more in my apartment as it’s an easy way to get some exercise while watching a Youtube video or listening to a podcast.

I’ve never been one for idling staring at a screen, although in recent years I’ve gotten more and more into watching Youtube videos I’ve downloaded, but I like to do something while I’m watching them. There is no better way to pass the time on a bike then watching the videos, from the comfort of my bedroom in the winter. It’s a great way to learn, while getting some exercise too.

Normans Kill Watershed

I can put on some music, and old dash cam videos and instantly transported back to West Virginia or some wild lands I was in a few summers back. It’s kind of nice how for the price of a few half pennies of electricity, I can be brought back to places I’ve been to before.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be in the wilderness, but if I can be burning some calories — while learning or relaxing — from the comfort of my home, that’s great too. There is so much interesting content I can download and watch from home, all while keeping my legs strong and ready for summer’s adventures.

Defense of Wearing T-Shirts

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In defense of wearing t-shirts in the winter…

I often wear t-shirts at home in the winter, like I do in the summer. 👕 They are comfortable. But I rarely have the heat above 60 degrees in my apartment, many times it’s much less. T-shirts are comfortable, and are one of many layers I wear in the winter. Over the t-shirt when I’m home, I will often throw on a flannel or my wonderful blaze-orange hoodie that live in from October to May each year. Rather then wear a long-sleeve shirt, I’d rather wear a t-shirt and dress in layers. This way it reduces amount of wash, 👚as only the lowest layers need to be washed regularly, and it still keeps me warm. ♨

Noticing How How My Energy Bills Are

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This past month, I was noticing how high my utility bills really were. 💡 I guess shouldn’t be that surprised, but I guess I didn’t realize I was paying nearly $100 a month for electricity and gas for my apartment. 💰 That seems like it’s a lot more then it was years ago, but honestly I’ve been using autopay, and not paying much attention. It’s been creeping up, despite all my efforts to save money.

I try to conserve power whenever possible, because I understand that my power mostly comes from the burning of fossil fuels. 🏭 Many years ago, I used to pay a renewable energy surcharge to ensure the energy I was using came from wind or hydro, but it looks like that surcharge has come and gone. With the high cost of power these days, I was thinking about discontinuing paying for it — but that’s now a moot point. Honestly, I am not sure how worthwhile paying that extra money really was — most of utility-scale renewable projects were going to get built at any rate. Eventually, my hope is be off-grid when I own land,🤠 so I won’t be burning that much fossil fuels for electricity, although I expect to be using fossil fuels for my truck and machinery, for the foreseeable future.

Conservation is my priority. ♻ I’ve never kept my heat above 50 degrees most of the year, although in exceptionally cold weather I’ll turn it up to 55 or 60. ♨ Without use of the electric radiator upstairs, it really never gets much above 55, which is fine because I kind of like it cold. I wear a sweater and climb under my sheets. 😳 I don’t own an air conditioner. I don’t have Internet or television at home, all my lights are energy efficient bulbs, although I admit the LED strip I built uses more energy then I would have liked. 💡 I do however tend to operate it at lower output levels, but the power supply I have is only about 85-90% efficient.

I do need to find ways to reduce my power usage, and try to get my bills down. Obviously in a few weeks I expect the thermostat to be turned to lowest setting, so the natural gas boiler won’t be running except for whatever waste in built in the system — a few therms because it’s impossible to turn completely off at my apartment. I’ll turn the hot-water heater breaker off anytime I expect to be gone more then a few days for camping. The refrigerator can’t be turned up much, otherwise it gets too warm in my experience. Most other things I try to leave unplugged and turned off when I’m not home. I don’t have Internet or Cable at home, so there is nothing along those lines getting used, and my big monitor and computer speakers 💻 for the most part is turned off except the rare times I’m actually using it.