8-1 Discussion: Personal Reflection
In my household, I live with my boyfriend in a fairly large (over 2400 square foot) single family home.
When it comes to renewable resources, we use water to drink, wash dishes, shower/bathe, and to wash
clothes. For electricity, Entergy Louisiana uses natural gas and nuclear power (Entergy, n.d.). When it
comes to energy, we frequently exercise caution. When we are not in a particular area of the room, we
turn off the lights, and when the temperature is below 80 degrees, we don't leave the air conditioner
on. Just like the house we live in, the appliances we have in the house are older and I am sure not very
energy efficient. Our kitchen is fairly large, and we have a typical oven, dishwasher, and microwave. The
house my boyfriend and I live in is really big, and is too much for us, but we have talked about putting a
timer on our hot water heater so that we can only use hot water at certain times and using a couple of
window units to cool only the portions of our home that we use the most. We’ve also discussed moving
to a smaller home or apartment somewhere, but due to the housing market, have not been able to sell
our home. For the time being, our best shot is to research other ways in which we can reduce our
energy usage in our home. We could also switch to LED bulbs throughout the house to help.
For non-renewable natural resources, I would have to say that we both use crude oil as well as other
petroleum liquids for the gas in our vehicle the most (U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA),
2022). I drive around sixteen miles to and from work every day plus a few errands here and there
