Saving a Penny on Your Kenya Power & Energy Bill.

I literally crawled out of my skin the other day when I saw my nephew leaving the lights on in my mum’s house. This was a crime punishable by death back in the day. I mean, in whose house were you leaving the lights on? We had a curfew for watching TV, technically we were not supposed to watch TV unless mum said so.
I remember one Saturday afternoon, I gathered a bunch of kids from church and brought them home with me. My plan was to watch a movie for one hour then sneak back to church before anyone noticed, the movie titled Rex took a little more than an hour, we were so much into the movie that we did not hear mum come in. Let me tell you, the world war that was unleashed on us that day can only be described as horror. We were beaten for sneaking from church, beaten for watching TV and beaten for crying because we had been beaten. When my friends had left, I was beaten again for bringing them home and beaten for crying then beaten for stopping crying because I was being beaten.

Let me breath in because that was a lot of beating for one person, I told my mum that I wanted to go home to my real mum and guess what, she gave me 50 bob, packed my clothes and bid me farewell then she told me, ‘’Jaribu kutoka kwa hiyo gate kama wewe ni mwanamke.’’
You guys, even you, could you? Anyway, I later learnt that my mum had grown a soft spot after all because my nephews and nieces now get away with everything that we didn’t.

I asked her what changed and she schooled me a good one.

She said that compact fluorescent lamps (cfl) use less energy than the normals lamps while LED bulbs save upto 85% energy.
Being a teacher, she spends a lot of her time reading journals and magazines, she told she was not amused that despite all the technology within our reach, we still have little to zero knowledge on common energy saving tips.

I took her words to heart and did a bit of my own research before buying my appliances. I chose a fridge that was suitable for me, not too big or too small. My fridge has the energy star regulatory certificate. Placing it in a well spaced area away from heat saves me a lot of energy as well.
The more the frost, the more energy the fridge uses so I regulate it to medium.

I also found out that switching off my appliances like the TV does not entirely stop consuming power, it still does. The recommended way is to entirely unplug them when not in use.

It’s amazing how much information we carry around in our gadgets but how little of it we actually know of.
I let my frozen foods thaw naturally as opposed to defrosting them in the microwave.
And when baking, i don’t preheat my oven if it’s not necessary.
And lastly, i iron once a month, starting with the light materials and finishing with the heavy ones.
The other day my mum came over for a few days and when she saw my kitchen, she was pleasantly surprised. But being an authentic African mother, she still made me keep water in a flask.