One Week Energy Challenge with Moneysupermarket and no Kettle

What electrical appliance could you give up for a week?
It is a question which certainly takes some thinking about. We reply on so many gadgets and time saving equipment nowadays, that choosing one to ban yourself from using for seven days can be a hard decision.

The Challenge:
I was recently asked if I would like to take part in the One Week Energy Challenge with MoneySuperMarket, where I was asked just that – to sacrifice my chosen item for a week and document my experience. I spent a couple of days trying to decide what electrical item I should and could give up, and decided that it needed to be something which I take for granted and use on a regular basis as I go about my everyday life. I realised immediately that I was not prepared to give up my washing machine because only few weeks ago it broke down, and it highlighted to me how much washing we accumulate as a family, and how expensive launderettes are nowadays! I also knew that I could not sacrifice my vacuum cleaner because the floors in my house are bad enough after one day, there was no way I could put up with uncovered carpets and kitchen floor for a week! I did discuss this challenge with my two boys, and suggested that we, as a family, could give up the television for a week, but funnily enough this was met with protest! In the end it was obvious which electrical appliance I should stop using for a week : my kettle.

It dawned on me that asides from using it for making hot drinks, I actually use it for other things too. I use it for when I am cooking, vegetables, pasta and rice as instead of waiting for water to come to the boil on the stove from cold, I cheat and add boiling water to save time! I also use my kettle to rinse out my sink, to get into the areas that I cannot reach just by using my tap, and I also use the kettle for washing up if the hot water has run out. Therefore, I thought this would be an interesting challenge to see how easily I could manage without taking the easy option to getting boiling water, by clicking my kettle on.

How I Got On:
I love drinking tea, it is my favourite tipple nowadays and I guess that on an average day when I am at home, I probably drink about 8 cups a day – more if I have friends pop over to see me. Maybe that that is not that much actually, but even so my kettle gets a lot of use as a result, and if the OH is home (which he is Friday – Monday) there are cups of coffee to make too. Obviously just because I have not been using my kettle for the last week, it did not mean that I was not going to be able to make hot drinks anymore, it just meant that I needed to go back to basics and heat the water up in a pan on the hob instead.

This was not a problem, although it does take a little longer and when it comes to pouring the water into my mug, quite a bit gets spilt! The way around this would be to decant the boiling water into a jug before pouring it into my cup, but I didn’t do this. I also learnt, quickly!, that it helps to measure the cold water into the pan using my cups or mug so I made sure I boiled the correct amount of water needed. Nothing worse, than waiting for the pan to come to the boil, to discover I didn’t quite have enough for two cups!I also learnt as the week went on, that it made good sense to get my teapot out to make a pot of tea, because this saved reboiling the pan again for my second cup. Actually, I have no idea why I do not use my tea pot more often, so I think that going forward I will do this with my kettle too.

Cooking vegetables and rice or pasta was also no bother not relying on my kettle, after all this was the correct and proper way of cooking them on the hob. I am just lazy and like to give the cooking time a boost by adding boiling water to the items being cooked. There was also one day when I wanted to wash the floor in my kitchen, and the hot water was all gone from the tap, so I needed to boil the water in a couple of large pans to add to my bucket. Again, this was fine, and probably did not inconvenience me any more than using a kettle, as I probably would have had to boil it twice anyway.

However, my biggest problem with not using my kettle was remembering that I was not using it and getting myself out of the habit of automatically going over to it to fill it up or click it on! I really had to stop myself, and I will be honest, once or twice I did switch it on, walk off and then remember that I was not meant to be using it! Old habits die hard I guess.

Did I Save Any Money?
Well, I took reading on my metre before and after I used the pan and then I tried the same with the kettle, and surprisingly there was hardly any difference in how much electricity was used.

As you can see the amount of electricity used for both methods were both very small and virtually the same, which really surprised me as I thought the kettle would use more, and therefore cost more money each time I made myself a cuppa using it. After speaking to the bill payer in my house, i.e. my OH, he said it was near enough impossible to work out how much electric was used for each methods, so I have searched the internet for answers instead.

To use a kettle it states that it costs around 2.5p to boil a full kettle (source)
The average kettle holds 1.5 pints and uses about one unit of electricity to boil 12 pints of water (or 8 x 1.5 pint-full kettles) – so that’s around 2.5p every time you boil a full kettle.**

**I only boil a full kettle if I were cooking something on the hob, the rest of the time I fill it with what I require e.g., 1 or 2 cups full

I think that if I used a gas hob then it might have cost slightly less to boil my water in a pan, but as it is there is not really a significant cost saving. However, it is more of a faff doing it on the hob so whether over time I would use it less because I would fill a pot of tea, and therefore save a bit of money that way, I would only discover if my kettle stopped working and I didn’t replace it for a while. As it is, I will go back to my kettle as it is both time and money saving. However, I will definitely use my tea pot more, as this would save me re boiling the kettle when I wanted a second cup.

This post was written in collaboration with MoneySupermarket, which is the is the UK’s largest, totally independent price comparison website, with a huge selection of services dedicated to saving you money. Although my week of giving up my kettle demonstrated that it did not really save me much money, one way I could make significant savings would be to switch energy suppliers. MoneySuperMarket can help find the best energy deals with the right energy providers for home owners. This is such a great idea and I know that my OH is always looking for the best way he can save cash on his energy bills, because afterall the more he can save on the electric the more he can spend on me LOL!

What electrical appliance do you think you could give up if it meant you could save a lot of money?

Photo source