If you are looking at going green at home, the place to start is by assessing your goals. When most people think of “greening” their home, they often think of energy efficiency and cost saving benefits. While those are two very valid aspects of going green, there are other motivators as well. Health benefits such as improving indoor air quality is a major factor for people with allergies or asthma. Sustainability is often the driving force for those who embrace environmental awareness in their daily lives.
What aspect of going green is most important to you? Knowing the answer to that question is the key on where to start in your home improvement efforts.
Once you’ve assessed your goals, you will want to perform an energy audit on the home. I recommend approaching this as a two-part process. Begin by doing a self-audit of your home’s energy performance. To make things easy on you, I have a Self-Audit Checklist you can use. Click here to request the Going Green at Home checklist.
Once you’ve gone through and checked things out yourself, you can begin making obvious improvements. Is there a gap in your doorway? Purchase weather stripping and easily install it yourself to seal the gap. Are you burning incandescent lights? Replace your bulbs with CFLs or LEDs. These are all low-cost improvements you can easily do yourself with minimal time investment.
You will start to see cost return immediately on your energy bills, and lifestyle return in your comfort levels.
