The obvious

So I made the title of this post as obvious as I hope I make the point of this post, because that is what it is all about, finding the obvious.  There are so many things that we can do during our daily routines to help reduce waste, save money, or well anything really.  And they are so obvious that I think they are sometimes over looked, especially people like me.  For example.  We have a room upstairs in our house that gets really warm during the summer.  Since we are all to cheap in this house to lower the A/C any more than it already is (76 F is it, absolute lowest setting we go to) we started looking into other (cheap) ways to help cost effectively and efficiently manage the upstairs temperature.  Some quick online research and bam found a bunch of solutions.  The ideas that we found were actually so obvious we all had a duuuuuurrrr moment.  A few of them we were already doing, but there were a few that we put into place.  One obvious, dur, suggestion was close the blinds (can honestly say we were doing this one, phew otherwise we would have looked pretty stupid).  Makes a lot of sense right.  So just break it down for a second and it is sooooo obvious.  If it is more efficient for you to use the natural light rather than closing the curtains and turning on an electric light then leave the curtains or blinds or drapes or whatever you call them open.  But if the sun is making your A/C run nonstop then close the curtains or blinds or drapes or whatever.  The other thing was to close all the vents downstairs (which stays a lot cooler anyway because little science class refresher hot air rises, ok I am finished) and force a little extra of the colder air from the aircon upstairs.  This we were only doing in certain rooms, but again pretty obvious, but we have expanded to the whole house.  Not a huge difference in the room upstairs, but enough to make it tolerable to be up there now.  And oh yeah did I mention that all the suggestions do not cost anything extra than what you are already paying for power.  There were other ideas but they required money and time to install some sort of attic fan and other fans that go on your A/C vents but I just wanted to point out the obvious and free ones (of which I am sure there are more if I were to keep looking).  Being environmentally conscious really is just paying attention to the obvious.  It is sort of like the leftover thing.  Sometimes I think I fail to mention the obvious on that idea too.  Beyond the fact that taking your own container saves a bunch of resources, eating leftovers also saves resources as well.  (Side note: it is also actually healthier to have leftovers b/c it helps cut down your portion size, just saying).  But eating leftovers reduces waste and the all the  additional resources that would have had to go into producing more food for you to eat.  Waste not want not (try to remember the number of people on this planet that go to sleep hungry, always helps me to waste less).  I guess the whole point of this post is just to step back for a minute and scan to see what other obvious solutions are staring us right in the face.  We (and by we I mean me) have a wonderful knack and tendency to over complicate things, and that forces us (still mean me) to miss the easy solutions.  Just saying.  If you have any obvious suggestions that you find useful please feel free to share.