Mission Accomplished?? Yes and No...

Okay, a rundown of what has happened so far:

Our family spent the last 30 days with all major appliances unplugged, except for those that would have been too cumbersome to get to or those that weren't being used anyways. At times, even our washer and dryer have been unplugged.

The result?

Well, this past 30 days, our family of 3 has only used 948 kWh of electricity, and has even shown a decrease in natural gas usage.

So...is the current family project over?

Nope.

While we may have accomplished a small part of what we were trying to do with this project, using less electricity, as well as (maybe) finally proving the point that unplugged appliances do save electricity, there were a few conditions that kept us from reaching our overall goal.

1. Our family numbers increased, decreased, and changed sometimes within the hour in the house this past 30 days, making it very hard to determine, based on a per-person average, exactly how much electricity and gas was actually used.
2. No previous hard-and-fast evidence in the previous electric/gas bills to compare things to.
3. A lack of notes and comparisons about what appliances were turned on, turned off, unplugged, plugged in, or left plugged in and forgotten.
4. No continuous blog posts and/or notes to share our experiences, as was intended in the beginning.

So...what happens now?

Well, we've come to a family decision that the family project, in and of itself, needs to be reset. The 30 days, as of today, starts over again, and we will continue to leave things unplugged and abide by the project rules that were laid out in the previous post, "Rules of the Road...Er, Project" post some time ago. There is, however, one or two notable exceptions.

Previous Rule:
Either the television OR one desktop computer can be turned on, but not both at the same time.

New Rule:
Both television and desktop computer may be on as long as they are both in active use by at least one individual. If either will not be in active use for longer than 10 minutes, the appliance in question must be shut down and unplugged.

Also, previously there had been nothing stated about use of the dishwasher. I would like to take the time to clarify that though the dishwasher remains "plugged in", as it would be a complete pain in the neck to unplug it, it will be used as little as possible during this 30 days, and all dishes, as much as possible, will be hand-washed in the sink.

While we are saddened and in some cases embarrassed by the lack of information that we have shared on this blog about our most recent family project, we hope that everyone will stick with us as we try again for a 'do-over', in part to gather notes and compare two bills under the same conditions, and in part to make sure that we are doing everything that we can do conserve energy during this time.