If you’re looking for ways to stretch your family’s budget, take a look at your electric bill. Although it often seems like small changes don’t mean much in the bigger scheme of your electricity consumption, they do. Your monthly usage and therefore, your electric bill is a direct reflection of all the ways you use electricity. Lamps, your television, your computer – both small and large appliances affect your electric bill.

People tend to focus on larger appliances if they’re looking to reduce energy consumption, but there’s another way to approach cutting your electricity usage. Try just going from room to room and doing an evaluation.

When you evaluate a room, you want to be sure you pay attention to everything that runs on electricity. Pay particular attention to lamps and lighting, because this could be one area where small changes could add up to big savings.

Do you have the right lamps and lamp shades for your bedroom, living room and kitchen? It is nice to use lamps to create interest with varying levels of light in a room, but be sure you have the right table lamps in place where you need them.

For example, if you have a reading chair, you should have a strong enough lamp and appropriate size bulb so you don’t have to have your reading lamp, plus three other lights on in the room to see. It will be more energy efficient to just have one appropriate lamp, and you can cut consumption by turning out the other three lights.