Saturday, May 8, 2010

Laundry (yes, it's as thrilling as it sounds)


Today was another busy day. I filled the car with gas, dumped my mileage statistics to a spreadsheet, got my first electric bill (yay), and did laundry (for the first time, I might add). Okay, let's dig in.

Yes, you heard right, I did laundry for the first time ever. It wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped, but I learned a number of interesting things. First, I've got enough clothes to do two full loads simultaneously (one dark, and one light). Second, it takes me around 3 weeks to get to that point. Third, it takes 35 minutes to wash, 55 minutes to dry, and about a half-hour to put everything away, bringing us to a grand total of 2 hours laundry time every three weeks (not bad, eh?). This is assuming that no one else is using the laundry room, since I can run both loads at the same time otherwise.

In other news today, I received my first power bill from Pacific Power. The billing comes to $19.40 for about half a month of energy usage (17 days). In all, I used 181 kwh of energy (lighting, appliances, and laptop, I don't use heat). How does this compare to some of you out there? I don't really have a good point of comparison.

Also, I filled the car this afternoon, so I won't have to do it tomorrow on my way to church. As mentioned before, I tabulated all the mileage information into a spreadsheet (graphs below). To summarize, the mileage has been consistent over the years, and it looks like commuting up 99W twice a week will yield around 38 MPG. I've been averaging around 360 miles a week since I moved down here (though it will probably drop a bit over time), so you're looking at around $30/week for gas (assuming $3/gallon). I'd like to see that average drop a bit, but we'll see how things change over the summer.


1 comment:

  1. That is so cool!
    I've been thinking about doing that sort of thing with my checking account. It seems like the online account manager provided by my bank ought to be able to make graphs. Maybe it can, but I haven't discovered it yet. :)

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