New Year.... New Me?

Welcome back, comrades!

2019 is The Year. I've set multiple resolutions and I am ready to fulfill them. My mission this year is to be the best me and take things slowly. I know people have different ways of doing things, but if you need inspiration for what do accomplish in 2019, take a look at my list:

1. earn more simoleons so I can buy the Trottco 27" TV for my sim's living room
2. finish 2 relationship stories
3. finish the cooking hobby
4. buy more lanterns for the garden walkway
5. earn some fashion gems to get clothing power-ups
6. buy a cradle to start the baby side-story

Some things I didn't include in my NewYear's resolution list is to be nicer to my brother, sign up for college scholarships, and earn real money.

You may be wondering, how did the heating situation go? Well, it didn't, is the thing.

Previously, I stated that I would be 100% NOT using the heater or lights. Turns out this is a terrible idea, especially if one needs to tile the bathroom. I realized that it was the darkest part of the year, tiling a bathroom required lighting, and sitting for hours in a cold room was not fun. This was no way to begin 2019!

I turned on the heater (not all the way!) and turned on my new LED lights 💗😍.

Don't worry, though, I don't use the heater to the extent I used to. This time, I only turned it to make my room lukewarm. Also, I mentioned I was tiling. We are remodeling the shed to make it look less like a shed, more like a B&B. So, by putting up new insulation, tiles, getting new windows, and patching up that hole in my floor, we are making my room more energy efficient. This is because insulation traps heat, meaning I won't have to use my heater as much. This website also estimated that “homeowners can save an average of 15% on heating and cooling costs," meaning I'm not just saving energy, I'm saving money!

So I broke my habit. What's the big deal? I'm sure I can get back on it if I focus enough. I just read this article: "6 Factors That Influence Our Behavior" by Colin Robertson and I learned that with enough willpower and good goal-setting, I could make my no-heater policy a real habit. In fact, I could even influence my family to decrease the entire house's energy consumption!

One of the most interesting factors this article talked about was #5: Structural Motivation.

In his article, Robertson gave his own example. In order to motivate himself to start waking up earlier, he let himself eat whatever he wanted for breakfast. Much the carrot-on-a-stick trope, studies have shown that when there is a real motivation for accomplishing a task, a person is more likely to do it consistently.

It made me wonder, what possible motivation is there for me and my family to decrease our energy consumption? It is easy to look at the cons: our house will be colder, sitting in front of the fireplace would be boring, our cat would be sad, etc.

I made this masterpiece, ty very much

Sure, it's better for the environment, blah blah blah... But what about a real incentive? Well, saving energy saves money! It's pretty much common sense if we are using less energy, then we aren't paying for as much energy.

Seattle City Light bills Seattle citizens in two brackets, those in the first block, and those in end block. On their website, they say that "In a winter billing period with 58 days, the first 928 kWh (16 kWh/day) are billed at $0.0557/kWh". However, if you use over 16 kWh/day in a 60-day billing period, then you are charged at the end-block price of $0.1451 per day.

That may not seem like a huge difference, but it adds up! For example: after two months (about 60 days), if my family uses 13 kWh/day, we would be charged a total of $43.45. Compared to if we used over 16 kWh/day, which we would get billed $113.18 for.

That is a huge amount of money we could save if we used less than 16 kWh/day!

There's another reason why I think telling my family about the pros of saving energy rather than the baby orangutans we a killing by keeping the temperature of our house at 78° is because of this article, by Christine Arena.

She argues that being positive about the change we can make is better than trying to induce a stress response. She said that "Humans are programmed to avoid what is uncomfortable", and a better way to get a message through is to make "people feel personally empowered". Instead of telling my family that we're killing the environment, I'll tell them that we can save bank by not using as much heating.

I have now tried to change my behavior for 50 days. Half of the time I was completely on it. I nearly froze to death (or at least a mild cold), but the rest of the time I slacked off.

I think for the remainder of the winter, I can pull off only using my heater when I am in the room. Another thing I can do is encourage my family to use less heat in the rest of the house.

The hardest part of this will be convincing my brother to wear actual pants. He has a habit of wearing summer clothes in the winter and then complaining about it being too cold...