The holidays are right around the corner! While this can be an exciting time for all, the light decorations alone mean higher expenses on energy bills. It’s fun to celebrate with festive parties and perhaps worry about the environment later, but there is a way to plan ahead to ensure you are still energy efficient even while the tree’s lit. Here are ten tips to help strategize a cheerful holiday season while still saving energy:

1. Use LED Lights Instead of Traditional

Decorating with Christmas lights is a time-honored tradition, but adding any number of strings of lights can also add a strain on your energy usage.

However, with LED lights, you can save a huge amount of money! For the same amount of lighting, the cost of running a string of lights for 12 hours a day for 40 days is widely disproportionate with different types of lights: a Standard C-7 bulb costs $25.13, while LED holiday lights only cost $0.56!

2. Turn Off Your Lights After 6 Hours

There’s no dispute. Christmas lights are magical, especially in the dark December month when it gets pitch black earlier than other times of the year. But once you hit the hay, it’s time to turn them off!

Lights should be on for no more than 6 hours a day. If you have trouble remembering, automatic timers are a simple solution that you can easily program to power off any time you want.

3. Purchase Energy-Efficient Gifts

Electronics are popular gifts for everyone in your family. Computers, cell phones, or gaming systems are often at the top of a lot of wishlist’s. Or perhaps the holidays are the time you invest in whatever you want to gift, ensure that it must reach in time to the recipient. In this regard, dhl express will help you to maintain the absolute timing a new appliance for your kitchen.

In any case, make sure to get Energy Star qualified products. These products are designed to save money and energy. While they might not save you money over this holiday season (unless you qualify for a rebate!), they will save you a lot in the long run!

4. Plan Your Shopping Efficiently

It happens all the time. You make a “quick trip” to the store, but inevitably you forget something. Especially when you are coordinating holiday events, you may not consider how much you need from one place. One trip turns into two, turns into three, turns into high gas expenses.

To conserve energy, both money and time-wise, plan ahead and try to get your shopping done in as few outings as possible. In this regard, boating can be an energy efficient outing. baadbiksen can help you in such outing.

5. Cook Efficiently!

The holidays are a mess of meals. Use these energy conservation tips to maximize your cooking and energy usage:

• • Before you even begin, take all of your ingredients out of the fridge at once. When you go back and forth, you waste a lot of the refrigerator’s energy.

• • Once you’ve assembled your meal and have it in the oven, don’t open the door to check! Opening the door of your oven just once can reduce the temperature by 25 degrees. Use the oven light, and turn it off when not in use.

• When using the stove, don’t use a burner larger than the pot, or you’ll be wasting energy!

Another way to save energy is to keep the door open while you’re cooking. This way the heat from the oven will move throughout the house, and you can lower your thermostat.

6. Get A Fire Going – And Lower Your Thermostat

Another way to give your heater a break this winter is to get a fire going in the fireplace.

Having a fire going and your heater on is overusing your resources, so be sure to lower the temperature once you’ve got the fire going.

As a quick tip, note that it’s ideal to keep your thermostat at 68° F throughout the winter.

7. Burn Your Fire More Efficiently

Instead of chopping up a tree, use man made all-natural logs. They are friendly for your wallet and the environment!

8. Mind the Gaps!

This also applies to fires – as well as the entirety of your house. There are a lot of small places where air that you’ve spent energy heating up can escape out into the cold. Be sure to check:

• • Your fireplace/chimney flue

• • Gaps underneath your windows and doors

• • Around recessed light fixtures

• Vents and ducts for air leaks

9. Reduce Your Junk Mail

Stores and shopping networks like to send mail to consumers, especially during the holiday season. Junk mail costs our planet about 53 million trees. Not only that, but they waste enough water to fill 81,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools!

Don’t sign up for mailing lists and switch to getting catalogues, coupons, and deals online. Some stores take coupon codes right from your smartphone!

10. Accessorize Inside

Our final tip for this holiday season is to dress warm – even inside!

Head and footwear are particularly helpful to keeping us warm indoors. Heat rises, meaning the heat from our bodies leaves through the top of our head, so a nice hat or scarf or keps can do wonders for keeping you warm.

Heat rising also means the floors are the first thing in your home to get cold. By wearing socks or slippers inside, you’ll less likely to feel cold in the first place – and be less likely to reach for the thermostat!