Would you like to sensitize your family to the importance of reducing your energy consumption? Making children aware of the importance of avoiding waste and teaching them good reflexes when it comes to energy use can be really fun, both for you and for them! Here Hilo suggests five fun ideas for improving your energy consumption as a family.
1. Hold an electricity-free day
To encourage your family to save energy, plan a day outside the house as a family. Just put your smart home in saving mode and enjoy the outdoors!
The challenge: Before leaving, find and turn off (and unplug, when possible) all the devices that use electricity and which are not essential: from lights to the sound system and including your video game console, this energy consumption is invisible, but quite real. Make this a habit every month!
2. Create a reward system for the day’s most eco-friendly behaviour
Creating a calendar of eco-friendly behaviours is the simplest way to show that we are all capable of saving energy, every day of the week.
The challenge: Create a table containing the name of each family member, then write ten good, easy habits to develop: turning off the lights when you leave a room, not leaving the water running while brushing your teeth, deactivating the smart switch to avoid phantom power loads, etc. For each eco-friendly gesture, award one point. At the end of the week, the person with the most points earns a prize.
3. Organize a candlelight evening
An evening picnic with board games by candlelight is the perfect way to enjoy time together as a family, plus it’s environmentally friendly.
The challenge: One evening (for example, you can choose a time when there will be a Hilo challenge), turn off everything that isn’t essential and that consumes electricity, spread a tablecloth and some cushions on the floor of the living room, move the coffeetable to make room for plates, napkins and glasses, light a few candles and get out the board games! This unusual evening at home is a GREAT idea for getting out of your usual routine and, at the same time, saving electricity as a family.
(And don’t forget to take a look at the Hilo mobile application to see the result of your effort! It shows your real-time power consumption and other consumption data.)
4. Cook without electricity
Once a week, challenge your family to prepare a meal without using electricity.
The challenge: Salads, sandwiches, wrap, energy bites... perform a search as a family for recipes that don’t require you to cook and prepare a meal, a dessert or a snack that doesn’t use any electrical appliances or the oven. If the project appeals to young and old alike, why not make it a weekly game?
5. Showering to your favourite song
To encourage your family to perform certain eco-friendly gestures every day, just make it a game... played in the shower!
The challenge: We all already know that it’s better to take a shower than a bath, since it consumes much less water. But be careful, taking a shower still means consuming water as well as electricity. So enjoy your showers, but only for as long as it takes to sing out loud your favourite song!
Repeating these actions frequently will also enable you to save, so why not give yourself a little reward as a family after a certain amount of time? For example, how about a fun night out, a meal at a restaurant or a trip somewhere? Alternatively, you could donate the money saved to an organization that plants trees.
