Jacob Teunas

For my challenge, I actually chose three things that are easy to forget about that I do almost everyday: conserving toilet water, heating and cooling naturally, and brushing my teeth without running water.  Thankfully, during the past couple of weeks we have experienced normal fall weather (no 80 degree days), so heating and cooling my apartment naturally was relatively simple (just had to open and close the windows depending on the time of day). But, if this challenge were to occur during summer or winter months, this would be a different story. Still, by not running the heat or air conditioning we conserved a lot of energy, which helped me realize how much a month we actually spend on heating and cooling. My second challenges were similar in which they both involved saving water. For the first one, conserving toilet water, it was a challenge at first because whenever I would clean the toilet, or blow my nose I would throw the toilet paper in the toilet and flush it, but for the past few weeks I have avoided flushing when doing so. It was challenging to break that habit at first, but after a day or two I started to catch myself and fix it. This challenge really opened my eyes on how much I flush the toilet a day. The other challenge was brushing my teeth without running water. This was a tough habit to break since I have always kept the water running while brushing my teeth, which wastes a lot of water, but that's what I grew up doing. After three days of constant reminders, I started to turn the water off while brushing my teeth. I know it was a bad habit, and I now realize how simple it is to turn the water off, and how much water is saved by doing so. So my challenges had a rough start (except the heating and cooling naturally) but after a couple of days of reminders, they became easier and more of a habit and I learned that I save a decent amount of money in conserving water and energy.