Living in a house with 5 kids causes the electricity bill to skyrocket. Me being one of those 5 kids, was constantly being yelled at for leaving on the lights and the T.V. Also being 9 years old didn’t help either. I didn’t understand that leaving on the lights cost money and that it hurt our environment. So my family and wanted to change our habits! According to Kara Roberts Writer of Save Energy says that “when you use your power less, you release less toxic fumes in the air from power plants supplying you the energy.” By doing this you help the word become cleaner! My family and I were determined to get it done and help out the earth. We started by replacing our light bulbs with LED ones. The LED bulbs use less energy which reduces power plant energy which leads to less greenhouse gases being released. This small step was big. We saved a lot more energy and we weren’t done yet. We set timers on the TVs so that if they were on for more than 30 minutes without use they would turn off. We also made a rule that was if you left a light on in a room you were just in you wou ld have to add a dollar to the family cookie jar. That jar never had more than 5 dollars each month. This really helped my home's carbon footprint not to be large just because we did the simplest thing, flipping a switch. Next we unplugged things that we didn’t use much like the coffee machine and a tv upstairs. I really encourage you to turn of the lights and unplug because something so little can lead to something huge. MAKE A CHANGE!

thanks for telling this story - it sound like your mom was strict but ultimately a good influence on your environmental behaviors!  Is that true of your 4 siblings as well?

Yeah it is!