Energy Saver News; WattBusters - The Habitual Roast

Here's an eye-opening story about a newlywed couple in the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. As the wife was preparing a roast for dinner, the husband noticed that she cut the ends off the roast. The husband asked the wife why she did that and the wife replied, "I'm not sure but that's how I learned to prepare roast from my mother."

The next weekend while visiting Mom, the new bride asked her mother why she cut the ends off the roast. The mother replied, "Well dear, that's just the way I learned to cook roast from my mother. They always seem to turn out fine so I've never given it much thought."

They were baffled so they gave Grandma a call upstate on the telephone to ask her why they cut the ends off the roast. Grandma laughed and said, "Oh Sweeties, during the Depression we only had one roasting pan and the roast wouldn't fit so I cut the ends off."

The above story highlights a point about habits. Many times we do things not because they make any kind of sense to us but because we've always done it that way. We don't ponder what we do, we just do it.

When I was a child, we received free incandescent light bulbs from the utility company. When they burned out, we would gather up the bad ones and swap them out for new ones. It didn't matter to us if the bulbs were 150-watt versions. They were free. Energy savings wasn't a high priority back then. Even when we had to eventually buy bulbs, we continued to purchase incandescents because that was what we always did.

The world has changed since then and now we can see that our individual energy usage not only affects the world but with higher electricity costs, it also affects our wallets. Old habits die hard but if we think about it, we can save around 3/4 of our lighting costs by using compact fluorescent bulbs. Just because we grew up with incandescent bulbs doesn't mean that we need to continue using them and wasting energy. It's time for some new habits of our own. The roast wouldn't fit in Grandma's pan but compact fluorescents fit perfectly in our lifestyles today.