1) My morning greeting ritual with the cats. When I come out of my bedroom, they're usually waiting for me on the landing. Before I even go into the bathroom I stop to say good morning to each one in turn, and pet all of them. They're always purring and happy to see me, and it's a nice way to start the day.
Once that's done I can use the bathroom in peace, and as I head downstairs the cats proceed ahead of me in an orderly fashion (instead of getting underfoot and begging for attention, which is not a good thing when I'm trying to negotiate stairs first thing in the morning--especially as there are six of them).
2) When I load silverware in the dishwasher, I'm a bit obsessive about putting salad forks in one slot, soup spoons in another, knives in another, etc. If I have a houseguest who puts them in the wrong slot, I'll rearrange them before running the dishwasher. It sounds crazy-compulsive, but in fact it makes unloading the dishwasher easier; I just grab one handful of silverware from each basket and put it straight away--I don't have to spend any time sorting it.
3) I hang all of my clothes up to dry, even though I have a dryer. Energy savings is only part of it; dryers are brutally hard on clothing, and by hanging my clothes to dry they last a lot longer. I can also put shirts directly on hangers, and once they're dry I can put them straight into my closet. Some of them might need a touch-up with an iron, but they don't end up nearly so wrinkled as they do in the dryer.
In the winter, I can hang a few items in the little boiler closet in the basement, and everything else fits on a rack I made that goes in front of the open boiler closet door--it's nice to put the otherwise wasted excess heat from the boiler to good use.
I still use the dryer for towels (because I don't like scratchy air-dryed ones), and sometimes sheets (if I don't have enough space to hang them). But that's maybe one dryer load a month in summer, two in winter.  |