Credit: SWNS / Heidi Ondrak / @duchessofthrift
A mum has shared her savvy tips to cut down on energy bills - including switching off the oven, using garden solar lights in the home, and working in Wetherspoons for the day.
Heidi Ondrak, 51, has seen her direct debits for gas and electric hike from £98-a-month to £268 - a 173 percent rise - and is dreading another increase in October this year.
The mum-of-two is finding as many ways as she can to cut down on her bills and save energy.
She has taken to showering at her local gym to save on her water bill, and limits showers to four minutes if using the one in her home in Plymouth, Devon.
She saves £28-a-month on meals by switching off her oven and hob and instead using an air fryer, slow cooker or George Foreman grill to make her family dinners.
A mum has shared her savvy tips to cut down on energy bills - including switching off the oven, using garden solar lights in the home, and working in Wetherspoons for the day.
Heidi Ondrak, 51, has seen her direct debits for gas and electric hike from £98-a-month to £268 - a 173 percent rise - and is dreading another increase in October this year.
The mum-of-two is finding as many ways as she can to cut down on her bills and save energy.
She has taken to showering at her local gym to save on her water bill, and limits showers to four minutes if using the one in her home in Plymouth, Devon.
She saves £28-a-month on meals by switching off her oven and hob and instead using an air fryer, slow cooker or George Foreman grill to make her family dinners.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:07 Today's energy saving hack is saving a bit on your cooking time.
00:10 So you're saving energy if you use an oven, saving energy if you use the air fryer like I will.
00:15 And also saving energy on the running of your fridge.
00:18 So I've got frozen chicken breasts and some curly fries.
00:22 And what I've done is taken what I want to eat to go into the fridge.
00:28 So I'll put this bowl into the fridge and they will defrost during the day.
00:31 And then that keeps the fridge temperature cold.
00:34 I bought these frozen, I put them in the freezer frozen so it's taken no extra energy to freeze these items.
00:41 Putting this coldness in the fridge will reduce the temperature of my fridge and it will stop you having to work as hard.
00:48 What it will do as well is shave time off the cooking time of these.
00:52 So in the air fryer they probably would have taken about 17 minutes so I can probably reduce that to about 12.
00:58 And these are only little bits but all these little bits add up.
01:01 So if you think about how many meals you cook over the week, how many times you use these appliances, it all adds up.
01:06 So that's my tip of the day is defrost the frozen food before you cook it.
01:11 I've brought the solar lights in from the garden and given them a charge up.
01:14 Obviously they've been outside in the sun.
01:16 So I'm going to use the solar lights.
01:18 The kids stay up later than us now so I'm going to use the solar lights to just light little spaces around the house that they sit in after we've gone to bed.
01:26 So hopefully they don't put the lights on and who cares if they don't do anything with the solar lights
01:30 because they'll run out of steam and I'll just recharge them on the window ledge or out in the garden the next day.
01:34 That's a decent little bit of ambient lighting.
01:37 I've got one on my little table there and these look quite nice indoors.
01:41 And what I'll do, I'll just charge them up on the window ledge.
01:44 Again I've put a little set there and they look kind of funky on there so it's free light.
01:49 My cheeky hack, I talk about it a lot, is showering at the gym.
01:53 So I've got a membership at one of the cheap budget gyms, it's like 15 quid a month.
01:57 A 10 minute power shower on gas is 43p in the gas and if you're on electricity it's £1.64.
02:02 So once you add the water into that as well, the cost of a 10 minute shower in a power shower at home is £2.09p if you're using electricity.
02:12 And then if it's gas it's £8.88p. You times that by 7 for the week.
02:16 So even if you're just popping in the gym just to have your shower, you're making best use of your gym membership.
02:21 If you've got two adults in the house with a gym membership, obviously you can double that amount.
02:26 So per year it's £760 a year you can save if you've got an electric shower at home and you have your shower at the gym.
02:33 It's £320 a year if you use gas.
02:36 People might say, "Oh, why bother with a gym membership, you could save your 15 quid."
02:40 Well actually that's my health insurance, I'm touching 52.
02:43 I don't have a single prescription for anything, so it's protecting me from diabetes, high blood pressure, it's good for your mental health.
02:52 So actually having the gym membership is cheaper than paying for prescriptions because I'm not looking after my health.
02:57 So actually showering at the gym is a really good way of saving quite a lot of money off your bills.
03:02 [Music]