This post is sponsored by Apartment Guide.

With the last of my budget for the Apartment Guide‘s “Green Up a New Space” Blogger Challenge, we decided to do a few things in our home t rel=”nofollow”hat we’ve been meaning to do for years.  They are both those tasks that we keep saying, “We need to do X,” and “I really want to do Y,” but we for some reason just haven’t.  I think it’s akin to overlooking a ding in your wall paint or stain on the carpet – you get used to the way things are so it’s hard to remember that they need to be fixed.

For starters, we FINALLY got around to replacing our thermostats with programmable models.  We bought two Honeywell 5-2‘s at Home Depot for $25 a piece.  Basically, we can program it to run on a certain schedule on M-F and then do something different on Saturday and Sunday.  There are four modes within the M-F and S-S schedules, which works well for us.  We have it set up to be cool when we are sleeping, warm up a bit before we wake up, warm up a lot more until about noon (DH is at work and the kids and I are usually running our errands at that time), and then cool off a little bit in the afternoons.  We’ve had them installed about a week and we seem to have found a good schedule.

Old and Busted (and no, the A/C wasn’t actually running at 70.)

New Hotness

Our electric company (Reliant Energy) sends me weekly emails detailing our energy use for the week compared to the previous week, so I’m excited to see if the new programmable thermostats made a difference.  I’m not expecting to get that email until Wednesday, so I’ll update here and let you know if our energy consumption went down.

After the dog door and two thermostats, we had about $30 left of “green” to spend.  I have really been wanting some houseplants to add some color, life, and better air quality to our home.  I know there is some debate as to how many plants you’d actually need to make your air quality better, but I figured it was worth a shot.

I have a black thumb – two black thumbs, even – so I needed to find some easy plants that I’d have to try really hard to hurt.  Apartment Guide even has a list of hard to kill houseplants, so take a look at that list if you are like me.

The first plant I picked up is a Sansevieria, or Mother-in-Law’s Tongue.  It’s care instructions said “WANTS MINIMAL ATTENTION” in big letters, so I knew she was the one for me.  These are resilient little guys that want low light and are perfect for offices, bathrooms, and low light areas.  I potted it in a gray pot I already had and added some sphagnum moss to the top.

She’s been in the master bath for an entire week and is still thriving, so I’m pretty proud at what an amazing plant parent I must be.

The other plant we picked up was one I thought I was going to have to fight some people at the store over.  As soon as I saw her, I put her in my cart.  Every other shopper who saw it was asking me where she came from.  She was the last one, and she was mine – all mine!

My new baby is a Aeschynanthus radicans, or a Lipstick “Twister.”  She wants medium indirect light, so this ledge between my living room and breakfast room is the perfect location for her.  This plant only needs light water, so I only need to water her when the soil feels dry.  She’s allegedly supposed to bloom red flowers, but I’m not holding my breath on that one. I just love the leaves on this plant.

One day, when she gets bigger, I’ll need to transfer her to a hanging basket.  However, since it’s a slow growing plant, maybe that will be a while.

Speaking of baskets – are you ready to find out who won the Apartment Guide giveaway for a basket full of $100 worth of green products?  Congrats to Erin for being the randomly selected winner!  She’s following AG on Twitter so she’s getting some good green home tips and now is getting some green products to put to good use!

Thank you so much to Apartment Guide for helping me (and Erin!) green up my space!  I’m looking forward to reading more green and other lifestyle tips from them via their Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Apartment Guide is owned by Consumer Source, Inc. Apartment Guide partnered with bloggers such as me to participate in its “Green Up a New Space” Blogger Challenge.  As part of that program, I received compensation.  They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about the products used for the “Green Up a New Space” Blogger Challenge. Apartment Guide and Consumer Source believe that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Consumer Source’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations.

Have you seen those infomercials that show hundreds of dollars literally flying out from under a drafty door?  Meet my pet door.  If I had hundreds of dollars, I’d have taped them to the bottom of it to pretend like they, too, were flying out.  Instead, I “staged” this picture with an old, brightly striped beach towel so you could really tell how much it blows open.

Okay, I lie.  That picture isn’t staged…I just have a really junky back patio right now.

Anyway, this picture shows what my dog door does on a perfectly normal day.  I live in a really flat area, so it’s perpetually windy here.  Our builder installed the world’s cheapest (to them) pet door, and it blows open about 75% of the time.  I guess my money (in the form of heating/cooling) really was flying out of the pet door!  The door is right by my seat at our dinner table, and my feet froze all winter long.  Don’t even get me started about what happens every time it rains.

So, as part of Apartment Guide‘s “Green Up a New Space” Blogger Challenge, we decided to replace our dysfunctional pet door with one that would stay closed.  We chose the”energy saver” Ruff Weather pet door, because it a) has dual flaps that will keep the rain out, b) is rated to stay closed in winds of 30 mph, and c) was in stock at my local Home Depot.  It cost $109 (but we needed the extra large size, as you’ll see below).  The new door is slightly larger than our last one, so my husband had to cut a slightly larger hole in the door with a jigsaw – no big deal.

The new door was greeted with some initial hesitation.

“Um, you want me to go through TWO doors?” -Duke

“Huh?” -Jackson (he’s really simple minded.)

Now that it’s been installed for a few days, we can already tell a night and day difference.  The door(s) have not blown open a single time.  My feet no longer get cold when I’m eating.  The dogs have even figured out to how to use it.

Keeping our heat and cold air inside our house is going to make a huge difference for us.  We won’t be “air conditioning the whole neighborhood” as my mother used to say, which means that we won’t be using as much electricity.  Installing a more energy efficient pet door is just one way you can go green without spending a ton of green.

Want to make some easy changes for yourself?  Here’s your chance to do it for free!  Apartment Guide is giving away a gift basket with tons of green items, such as cleaning and sustainable materials products.

Want to win it?  Yay!  All you have to do is either follow Apartment Guide on Twitter or “Like” them on Facebook.  Then, just leave me a comment below letting me know which one you did!  You are welcomed to do both, but you need to leave me a comment for each so that you’ll be counted for both.  This giveaway will end at midnight CDT on Thursday, March 17. Good luck!

Apartment Guide is owned by Consumer Source, Inc. Apartment Guide partnered with bloggers such as me to participate in its “Green Up a New Space” Blogger Challenge.  As part of that program, I received compensation.  They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about the products used for the “Green Up a New Space” Blogger Challenge. Apartment Guide and Consumer Source believe that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Consumer Source’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations.