things that occur to me

We have a large toaster oven with several rack height settings.  I used to thoroughly re-heat things like pizza in 15 minutes on the “bakery” setting, with the rack in the middle.  On a lark, I raised the rack height and discovered that I could do the same job in 7 minutes, closer to the top heating element (but further from the bottom).  The simple step of moving the rack to be closer to one of the heat sources has saved me more than 50% on my toaster oven electricity usage.

This surely ranks up there with advice such as “put a sweater on to save on your heating bill” and “live in the basement in summer to avoid cooling the house.”