One of the main problems was that we were all too well off,  sure we all worried about the environment a little.  But surely it didn’t matter if we just treated ourselves to that new laptop, latest Iphone, foreign holiday etc, etc.   The problem of course was that all our economies were based on throwing away and consuming – endlessly and relentlessly replacing perfectly good items because a shiny new model had come into existence.

I’ve been told that not so long ago you could pick up a top of the range LCD TV from a rubbish tip in Tokyo with ease – purely because the model was 12 months old.   It’s not surprising that our economic model has collapsed – it was quite clearly unsustainable in the long run.

So now to the title of this post – the Austerity Opportunity and it comes from a discussion I had with a cobbler the other week.   Now we all of course know what a cobbler is but I wonder how many use their services regularly – there used to be loads in my home town – now I can think of only one.

Are they All Broken?

Do people repair shoes anymore or merely dispose and replace?  The cobbler was fairly certain that very few people did repair shoes compared with 30 years ago.   He told me about recently he had bought a special machine which was able to repair running and training shoes perfectly.  But after 12 months of virtual none-use he sent the machine back.   Nobody repaired trainers or sports shoes – they just bought new ones.

But this is where there will be an opportunity – to make business that repair, recycle and reuse rather than just throwing on the landfill sites.   When cash is short people will want to spend a few pennies repairing their trainers rather simply to save money.  They’ll make do, and reuse and recycle things increasingly.   Any businesses that tap into this austerity market and embrace the concepts could end up doing very well.

I wonder how many cobblers are looking at these sport shoe repairing machines again, or how many eco friendly business opportunities the world financial crisis will actually end up bringing.  It’s certainly a good opportunity to start any sort of business which will enable people to genuinely save money and help them to reduce, reuse and recycle.

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If anyone every told me it would be fun to clean floors I would laugh but honestly the Bissell Steam Mop is fun to use and most importantly it is eco friendly. Floor steam cleaners like the Bissell Steam Cleaners work with water pressure. Instead of using harsh chemicals that can irritate your skin and sinuses they use the high pressure power of water. This is not only healthier if you have small children and pets around but it is great for adults also!

The Bissell Steam Mop uses washable microfiber pads. Disposable cloth pads like a Swiffer cleaner are expensive and they fill the landfills. And steam works beautifully to truly clean the floor not just move dirt around like other cleaners do. Because of the lightweight size and shape it is easy to move. It has a 360 degree swivel head so it can get dirt from hard to reach area.

The best way to use the Bissell Steam Cleaners is to sweep or vacuum the floor first to remove all the loose dirt. Then run the cleaner over the area. Using the lightweight stick you can easily move the head to steam clean the deepest nooks and crannies like under kitchen cabinets and around the tub and toilet.

Bissell Hard Floor Steam Cleaner

One of the great things about the device is there are no chemicals to inhale – no fumes to expose your body to. I can recall cleaning with a lemon disinfectant some years ago. Lemon smells good, so I took a quick whiff of the cleaner. Almost instantly, I felt like my nose was on fire. This was a concentrated solution so that was part of the problem. But even with thinning these products the chemicals are still there. Bad for the environment and for you and me.

Thinking of all those disposable cleaning pads in our landfills is pretty sad also. Especially when it is so avoidable. The Bissell Steam Mop also does a much better cleaning job. If you have been using disposable cloths or a mop you will be amazed how much more dirt this steamer picks up and it is definitely so much better for the environment.

The Bissell Cleaners are also very affordable. I picked up the least expensive, the Bissell Steam Mop Hard-Floor Cleaner, Green Tea, 1867-7
and found it does the job perfectly. By the time you add up the price of a swiffer, chemical cleaning solution, disposable pads etc. versus the one time cost of the Bissell Steam Cleaner with washable microfiber mop pads you will find you save a lot of money.

It also has a small footprint making it easy to store.

Saving the environment and saving money with a Bissell Steam Mop is an easy choice!

Click Here for the Best Price on the Bissell Steam Mop Hard-Floor Cleaner

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Kill-a-Watt

I recently heard about these nifty little gadgets that you can use to see exactly how much energy each of your household appliances are using. Made by a company called p3international, you simply have to plug them into any outlet in your home and then plug any appliance into the receptacle on the Kill-A-Watt and it will tell you exactly how much electricity any item in your home is using.

But it gets even better, you can also program the Kill-a-Watt to tell you exactly how much electricity each item in your home is using per day, per week, or per month. It doesn’t only tell you in kilowatt hours; it breaks it down into dollars and cents…terms we can all understand, thank you very much!

I’ve got three kids and some day’s I seriously don’t think they know what a light switch it. They get the on part, but the off switch must not work in their rooms. Same for televisions, radio’s, bathroom fans…you get the picture. I’m planning to make my kids test every appliance that they use. They’ll then be required to make a chart of the daily usage of each item they have in their room and every day I find it on, I’ll take the daily usage amount out of their allowance. Either I’m gonna get rich or they’re going to start turning stuff off.

I’m willing to bet that if you actually use the information that you get from testing different appliances in your house, you can save the cost of the Kill-a-Watt meter in a few short months.

I’m a sucker for data, so my advice is to test each item, and then make a spreadsheet tracking how much different appliances are costing you to keep plugged in. You can then decide what items are worth unplugging when not in use or connecting to a surge strip that can be turned completely off.

If you decide to use the Kill-a-Watt, let me know what you learn. I’ll post the results here.

For more information on the Kill-a-Watt meter, Four (4) Kill A Watt Power Meters

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1. Dial back the knob on your heater thermostats. Just by turning down the heat in the winter and turning your air conditioning thermostats up in the summer time, you can save a ton of energy. Just one or two degrees makes a huge difference.

2. Clean your clothes in cold water. It works great and will save on electricity. Hang them out to dry instead of using a dryer. This is another great way to save our planet and air dried clothes smell so fresh!

3. Walk instead of driving a car. The less emissions and gas used the better for our planet.

4. Use energy saving light bulbs. This is a great way to help the earth.

5. Consume and use less. We have so much stuff but we only use a small amount of it. We tend to use the same things over and over. So who needs so much stuff?

6. Recycle. Not using something? Give it to someone who can. Why hang onto things that can help someone else. Donating your clothes and books can make a huge difference in someone else’s life. And you are not using them so why not?

Just make a start to eco friendly living and you will be on your way to helping yourself and the planet.

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Common sense dictates that if you can reduce the amount of time that you are running your furnace or central air, you’re likely to save a lot of cash.  Without a programmable thermostat, it’s nearly impossible. I guess, in theory that you can turn your thermostat before you go to bed at night and then turn it back up when you get up, but seriously, who wants to go racing through a cold house every morning to turn up the heat. Even worse, you’ve got to either wait for your house to warm up or you’ve got to take a shower in a cold bathroom.  As green as I try to be, I’d rather leave my heat on all night than to take a shower when my bathroom feels like an icebox.

Leaving the house poses the problem too.  You could turn down the heat in the winter or turn off your air conditioner in the summer before you leave for the day, but you are faced with the same problem as before…you’ve got to come home to a freezing cold or stifling hot home.

Enter the Honeywell Programmable Thermostat. You don’t have to give up comfort to save energy anymore since this bad boy will allow you to set the thermostat any way you want for each day of the week. That means you can program your air conditioner to turn off at 7:30 am as you walk out the door and set it to turn back on at 5:00 pm so your home will be nice and cool when you walk in the door at 5:30 pm. You don’t have to update it on the weekend, because you can program completely different settings for each day of the week.

I typically set my heat to 62 degrees at 10:00 each night, so the heat isn’t constantly running while I sleep and I set it to 70 degrees at 5:00 am. By the time I get up at 5:30 5:40, the house is nice and warm again.

If Honeywell isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other programmable thermostats on the market. I’ve used a few of them, including a Lux and an earlier version of the Honeywell Programmable Thermostat, and this one is by far my favorite – but it all depends on what you are looking for.

I’ve saved literally thousands of dollars on my energy bills since I started using a programmable thermostat and only wonder why I didn’t start using them earlier.

As long as you actually use it, you are guaranteed to see a return of your investment on this purchase. You can check out this Honeywell model by clicking the picture below.

Honeywell Programmable Thermostat

Have you used a programmable thermostat to save on energy costs? How much have you saved? Do you find that it’s easy for you to use? Share your experiences and help other readers to save too!

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