Guilt: free

My mobile phone seems to have contracted a serious problem – that being if I make or receive a phone call, I can’t hear the other person unless my phone is on speaker phone. It took me a while to work out that it even worked on speaker phone though and so I may have phoned a couple of people, thought I hadn’t got through, said something highly inappropriate and then hung up on them. Nothing new there then. Anyway, I can’t upgrade my phone (for free) at the moment as I am only a few months into my current contract so G is going to lend me a phone until I decide what to do – and I am sort of hoping that by doing nothing that my phone might miraculously start working again. This is why I never attempt any DIY, I’d spend the whole time relying on faith to fix my electrics when a qualified electrician might be more effective.

I actually got a letter from my electricity company a couple of days ago telling me that they want me to pay them less money each month. My monthly payments are going to go down from £64 a month to £41 for my gas and electricity, which is very good news. I think that me using energy saving light bulbs and getting my hot water thermostat fixed etc might actually have really paid off and so I am going to see if I can do a few other bits that might cut my bills a bit more. I’ve been trying to track down some suitable energy saving bulbs for my kitchen and think I might finally have found some. I’m also going to get some insulation to go behind my radiators to try and reflect a lot more heat back into the room (this being more useful in winter but given the summer we have had, may come in useful before then…).

So now I need to track down some more energy saving light bulbs – I have had trouble finding some for spotlights and for a dimmer switch but have managed to find both of these now and just need to find the cheapest place from which to buy them and then hopefully that will save a bit more too. Whilst I would like to say that I am doing this to improve the planet, my motivation is far more about saving money because I figure why spend it on things like electricity when I could be spending it on much nicer things. However, if you are more altruistic than me and want to find out what your carbon calculation is then you can look here. The only thing I would say is that ti is not entirely helpful that it doesn’t give you any context for it – so whatever figure it comes up with should you think that is good bad or indifferent? Perhaps this doesn’t just help to calculate your carbon emission but also allows you to calculate your own level of guilt.