Cost cutting tips. So with the spiraling cost of food and electricity I thought this would be good.

Some great tips here from everyone, except maybe the Santa grave. I will spare my niece from that.

I monitor our energy usage and try to keep the average below 10kWh per day. I'm generally able to do it Monday to Friday but if we are home all day on weekends it's impossible.

Things we do:

Slow cooker & batch of that

Bread and dinner in oven at same time

30 minute immersion in morning, max

19deg heat in winter 7am-10pm, 14deg otherwise

We have an open fire, that in evenings instead of heating

Measured kettle to be around 2kWh per week working from home. I can live with that.

Blankets on the back of every couch, use those first, if still cold then ok for heating.

I think my fridge is using 2kwh per day, will take suggestions from boards and change temperature.

Lots of cold air blowing from our front door and hall. Will also take suggestions from boards to professionally upgrade all our door/window seals.

Also saw a suggestion to limit how often we open the fridge.... almost impossible, I like to stare into the fridge 50 times after dinner in the hope there is something interesting. I would need some sort of professional treatment to stop this.... maybe that could save energy. :p

A lot of pets are bing surrendered to pounds in the UK, a charity is offering to foster them on a temporary basis in the hope that they can return home.

Use your pet as a hot water bottle to avoid boiling the kettle.

100%

I'm renting but if I owned the house I would have done it years ago. Parents just switched theirs over to a stove, haven't lit it yet but expecting good results.

If you are living alone pick one room, turn off the heat in the other rooms. Go to Tesco at 8pm,any items are half price, with a yellow sticker. There's a few shops that sell food, sweets biscuits, half price, near sell by date. Pack of biscuits 30 cent. You can watch TV free to air on saorview, or an old sky box itv, bbc. Free No subscription needed. No sky card needed

Just a question more so, I was thinking towels that are used just for drying after a shower we usually put these in the wash. Can they just be washed as normal but on cold water setting in washing machine rather than 30c etc.. They wouldn't have stains or anything, just I remember someone here mentioned its not a good idea due to some type of bacteria ?

I bought a pressure cooker over the weekend. It's much more efficient than an oven. Uses 1kw/hr as opposes to an oven using about 2.5 kw/hr. Plus it cooks much faster than an oven or hob. Cooked a chicken in less than 20 mins which would probably take over an hour in the oven.

I've also been experimenting with it over the last few days. Cooked a chicken curry for tea last night. And stewed a load of fruit for a desert.

Very handy to batch cook and save electricity at the same time.

We lit the fire yesterday, around 1. It's a Stanley cassette style stove literally all I put on it over the day was nine sods of turf and the few clods and kindling. OK yesterday wasn't really cold but with a new baby we wanted a bit of heat on. They are some job. Plus when not lit they plug a big heat escapeway.

I didn't know this till I watched one of Skillbuilders videos on YouTube, but with insultation, do not compress it, its to remain uncompressed if its the wool type

I hadn't heard about bacteria. I wouldn't be confident about how clean it'd be though. Does your washing machine have a quick wash setting?

Just thought of a good one there, I got it done when doing up the house, get the radiators cleaned out. Some difference in how the rads come up to temp and how hot they get.