My wife doesn’t necessarily agree but I like to get rid of stuff if I haven’t even touched it, looked for it or wondered about it in a year. To me, this helps keep life as simple as possible. The older I get, the more appealing a pared down, simpler life is to me. So it dawned on me why haven’t I been using the shades and drapes in our home more effectively. They stop or mitigate direct sunlight heating inside the home and that is a good thing. It saves money on HVAC cooling costs. And yet, using the shades or the drapes tends to be an after thought for our household. I decided last spring that just wouldn’t be the case. I made a wager with all of my family members to motivate the using of the shades to help the HVAC equipment. That was all it took to get the shade and drapes in use in our house. So I went a step further with the wager by extending it to thermostat setting. The more we could keep the thermostat in the low 80’s during the peak heating hours of the day, the more money I would spend on vacation. It was actually sort of a fun way to deal with all the HVAC cooling we deal with in the summer. But at the end of it all, I tallied up all the savings and it was staggering. Let’s just say that we had a very, very nice vacation at the end of summer.