Our living area is open plan and has no door closing off the passageway, or in turn the laundry, making an unnecessarily large area to heat or cool. Also the laundry has a glass external sliding door that gets afternoon summer sun and pours in heat. This month our sustainable act was to erect a thermal-backed barrier curtain where the laundry joins the rest of the house. If we owned the house we would put a door here, but our landlord will not even allow us to put in picture hooks, so a curtain rod held in place with a pressure spring was the next best option – and much cheaper.
Initial cost: $30 worth of premade curtain, curtain rod, spring fitting and curtain hooks.Initial time: 10min to measure and cut curtain rod to size, 10min to fit hooks/rings to the curtain, 1min to fit.
Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero.
Impact: Saves afternoon heat entering the laundry from heating the rest of the house, thus significantly reducing our dependence on air conditioning and making it more efficient when we do run it. The curtain also saves heating the laundry in winter.Although not part of the month-by-month sustainable acts, it is probably worth noting that Tyson also did two courses this month, one training to do home sustainability assessments and the other looking at decarbonising cities. Educating ourselves and sourcing creative ideas about how to make an impact are both crucial to our attempt at more sustainable living.
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