After reading about the question on Front Load washers, I thought I would share this information with everyone. Like I posted in the Front Loader post, I used to work at Home Depot here in MD and in Atlanta. You wouldn't believe how much money you can save changing a few things around the house. Some of these things are quite expensive so unless you have the spare change to change out your appliances, I would just say replace them as needed. BUT there are some other things you can do such as changing your light bulbs!
Replacing your regular incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs will save you about $30-$40 over EACH bulb's lifespan... At first I didn't really think about how much that really is... but walking in two rooms, the bathroom and hallway, I counted 24 bulbs. I started to count all over the house but that's just way too many bulbs to count, we easily have about 140 bulbs here. But just upstairs alone with those 24 bulbs would save me minimum, $720 over their lifespan! 140 bulbs... $4,200! Now that math said something to me!
On to appliances. A non energy efficient appliance can KILL your utilities. Sure, the appliance itself may have been cheap, but look what it's doing to your bills... SKY HIGH! a regular top load washer uses about 40 gallons of water. As opposed to a newer agitator-less top loader or front loader which use on avg. about 20 gallons... that's half the water. Same thing goes for electricity. Sure the higher end models cost more, but you can pay the appliance off, you can't pay your utilities off. That's an on-going expense, AND higher-end appliances last longer, have more features, are more stylish, and come with extended warranties from the manufacturer. Once you add all of this up, you'll find the higher-end appliance actually costs less!
You can find even more information on these topics at my site. It's a free site, not selling anything, but just provides great content on shopping for these types of items. It also provides places to shop for appliances and other things online.
The site is: http://www.all-about-appliances.net [1] if you have any questions don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail! SandralHamrick@yahoo.com [2]