How to find cash hidden in your house

You don’t have to look under the floorboards to find the cash that’s hidden in your home. Many of your ongoing monthly costs come in the form of energy - you know, those bills that keep showing up every month.

We can show you how to take control and reduce your carbon emissions in each room of your home -- and discover that hidden cash.

If you have a few evenings free, become a Weeknight Worker with our simple, easy projects. If you have a little more time to dedicate, become a weekend warrior -- it’s a bit of a bigger time commitment, but you’ll see bigger savings.

Laundry room: Save $60 to $185

Weeknight worker
Did you know that 90% of the energy needed to do a load of laundry goes into heating the water? The easiest way to start saving money in the laundry room is to simply wash your clothes with cold water.

With today’s advanced detergents and soaps, cold water can be just as effective as hot water. Merely pressing the “Cold/Cold” button on your washing machine 80% of the time will save you between $60 and $100 per year.

Weekend warrior
Want to “launder” even more money? Well, add another energy saving twist: Skip the clothes dryer and line-dry your laundry. By avoiding another laundry room appliance you can save up to an additional $85 per year. Adding that savings to the $60 to $100 you saved with the cold-water laundry, you could save anywhere from $145 to $185 every year.

Kitchen: Save $20 to $300

Weeknight worker
Here’s a simple way for you and your family to save money: Use the dishwasher less. Many people do a load every day, but by waiting for the dishwasher to be full before you run it, you could cut your dishwasher use by a third, saving you a total of $21 per year.

Weekend warrior
If you’re ready for extreme kitchen efficiency, it’s time to upgrade those old clunkers. New Energy Star-rated refrigerators and dishwashers use a fraction of the energy that those terribly inefficient older models use.

If you upgrade your older dishwasher and refrigerator to Energy Star models (top freezer for fridges is the best), you could lower your annual energy cost by $85 every year (from $170 down to $85). And if you use the government’s new stimulus money for upgrading appliances, you could receive up to an additional $200 for your new Energy Star-rated refrigerator. That’s a total of $285 saved in the first year alone.

Bedroom: Save $50 to $150

Weeknight worker
Replace just five incandescent light bulbs in your bedroom with CFLsand over their lifetime -- a little over three years if you average five hours of use every day -- you can save $30 per bulb. That works out to about $10 a year per bulb, so by replacing five incandescent light bulbs you can save around $50 every year.

Weekend warrior
If replacing more incandescent light bulbs means saving more money, why stop at just five? You’re a weekend warrior, you’re committed. Why not go for an additional 10 light bulbs: 15 CFLs could save you a total of $150 every year. Heck, replace every light bulb in your home, and cash will pour out of every light socket.

Living room: Save $20 to $225

Weeknight worker
Money is flying out your windows: Leaks can be responsible for 30% of the total heat lost in your home. There’s a simple solution though -- and that’s weather-stripping.

Depending on your window type and air-flow method, you could potentially save $7 to $14 per window, per year in efficiency upgrades. If you weather-strip just three windows in your living room, you can save $21 to $42 every year.

Weekend warrior
Why not weather-strip your entire home? Increasing the efficiency of your windows and blocking the small leaks that allow air to go in and out, you can knock off up to 15% of your annual heating and cooling costs. A typical U.S. family spends about $1,500 on its utility bills every year, so by minimizing air leaks through your windows, you could save around $225 every year.

Adding it all up

So how much cash is hiding in your home? If you follow all of the weeknight worker tips, you can count on saving $152 to $213 every year, and all for a few simple changes and a few hours of dedication. Now, if you put in some serious time as a weekend warrior, you’re looking at annual savings of $805 to $845.

Yes, you’re saving a lot of money. But don’t forget the environmental benefits as well: For example, just one CFL bulb can save over 2,000 times its weight in greenhouse gasses over its lifetime compared to an incandescent. Now that’s big savings.