Thrift, Space Blankets, & Toasted Blinds

Estee has been slacking on the blog so I thought I would take this opportunity to write about how our small family saves money. First off, we try to live within our means and don't buy things unless we have the money. It's crazy, I know. We never pay full price for things if we can help it too. That includes furniture, electronics, clothing, kitchenware, books, and much more. We love Ebay and Craigslist and are learning the art of haggling. We love Dave Ramsey and I have listened to his Financial Peace University a few times already. If you don't know who he is then buy his book "The Total Money Makeover". Buy it used too.

One of the other ways we keep expenses down is by cutting utility costs. After our last energy contract ran out I searched for the best rates and found that we could cut ours by about 25%. After that small victory, I wondered if there was something else we could do to heat and cool our apartment more efficiently. After searching various forums online, I found a simple and cost-effective solution: blinds made from SPACE BLANKETS. They are large reflective mylar sheets that look like tin foil and reflect 95% of heat. They cost about $1 a piece on Ebay so I bought 10! As I opened their individual packaging I noticed they came with a warning not to use them for sun tanning because they could cause severe burns! Armed with our staple gun, we stapled them to the wall behind the windows so that they were not visible to the public. Estee made me leave a few windows alone so that she didn't feel like she was living in a cave. The difference was apparent immediately! The kids room which was previously an oven now felt much cooler, plus the space blankets blocked out the sunlight which helped keep them asleep longer during nap time! The real efficiency test was that next month's electricity bill. Imagine our shock when instead of being in the $150's it was in the $50's! We thought maybe we caught the tail end of spring in that months bill and waited for the next months bill. It was in the $40's and has stayed there for the past 3 months! Please note that this summer we had several consecutive weeks of 100+ degree weather. We used our AC sparingly and run fans whenever we can too, so it hasn't been a complete cake walk. We were saving some serious cash and my plan seemed perfect, or so I thought.

I came home from school one day to find a small yellow note from our apartment complex taped to our door. It was a vague form letter that said we had to replace a damaged blind. I called the apartment office and asked what was wrong with our blinds because I had not noticed any damage. She said one of our blinds was yellowed and that it needed to be replaced. I asked how it would have turned yellow and she paused then asked, "Do you guys smoke?" I laughed and told her we did not and she replied, "Good, because I was having a hard time visualizing Estee smoking it up." We had a good laugh about that and then she offered to replace the blind because it was probably defective. Before I took her up on her offer I informed her about our space blankets and bragged about how much money we were saving on our electricity bill. I asked her if she thought that maybe the space blankets were the culprit for the blinds turning yellow and she told me she did not have any experience with space blankets, but that maybe we should wait and see what happened to them over the next few weeks. The next day I left for Austin's wedding in Utah, and a week later when I came back the blinds had definitely changed. They were starting to turn brown and sagging a bit. Thats when it hit me: WE WERE COOKING OUR BLINDS!!! The space blankets were reflecting so much heat that the vinyl blinds were reaching their melting point. Wikipedia says the melting point of vinyl (or PVC) is from 100-260 degrees Celsius which converted to Fahrenheit would mean at least 212 degrees!!! That is the boiling point of water!

I called our office back and explained the truth of the mater and admitted that we needed to purchase some new blinds. Well, we kept putting it off until one day the office lady came beating down our door at 7:45 one morning because the owners were coming to tour the property. She handed us some new blinds and begged us to put them up in the next five minutes. I had Estee hold up our burned blinds so I could take a picture of them. Here they are:

The moral of this story is that space blankets can indeed save you money. I guess the next step is to see if you can harness this raw power by cooking something............... like cookies, potatoes, or perhaps a tin foil dinner. I am hesitant to suggest this in case the food were to spontaneously combust and burn your home down. That would be difficult to explain to the fire department and your insurance company. You can always remind them that the only warning on the package was not to use the space blankets for self tanning.