THANKS for all the good ideas.
Check your power provider. Mine (
www.reliantenergy.com) has several helpful hints and even a place to key in to see what each appliance costs you. My rate is at $.14/kWh.
Hubby and I agreed that we can not go to the grocery store without a list and we must try to shop only from the list. We have a bad habit of stopping on the way home from work to grab a few things and ending up getting extras. We need to get better about thawing something out for supper. We literally have 4 freezers (1 on the side-by-side in the house, 2 big ones in the garage, and 1 on the extra refrigerator in the garage). I figured that it costs $25/month for each, so we are going to consolidate and hopefully sell one of the freezers. We re-inherited the extra refrigerator and a compact refrigerator from kids college days. Since the storm, we haven't plugged the compact in and will try to sell it. With such a big family, the extra frig comes in handy, so we'll probably keep it.