Making little changes really can make a difference. Here’s an example.

The other day I decided to pull our fridge-freezer out of its corner to clean the coils at the back because when they get covered with dust and fluff they become less efficient and it uses more electricity and so creates more carbon, etc. I also decided to defrost it because having a freezer compartment clogged up with ice increases its energy consumption and, while I had the opportunity, I repositioned it so that there was more space for air flow around the back and sides.

Guess what? I’ve since been able to turn the fridge’s thermostat down a whole degree because it’s now working so much better. Now, if the dial gets inadvertently nudged up much past ‘2’ a pristine layer of frost forms on the back wall and the lettuce in the chiller drawer freezes solid. We used to have it set at 3-and-a-half.

That’s a significant improvement in performance. I only wish I hadn’t left it so long to knuckle down and clean the thing out. Clearly there’s still a touch of the old eco-slut in me, in spite of all those challenges. Or perhaps it’s just that I find any excuse to avoid doing the housework.

Anyway, my success with the fridge-freezer made me reassess the positioning of our upright freezer, which was next to the dishwasher, also making it less efficient (the side adjacent to the freezer would get quite warm).

The freezer had been bought in the days when I was more reliant on ready meals and pizzas and oven chips for our dinners. I’d buy bread and milk from the supermarket and freeze that, too. Now, as a result of the eco-challenges, the way I cook has changed. I make just about all our food (including the pizzas), get the milk from a milkman and my husband makes the bread in the breadmaker.

Once I had removed the out-of-date convenience food and the foil plates of unidentifiable leftovers and stray fish fingers and ancient milk and old, rock-solid loaves and given it a good clean, there was very little that I wanted – or needed – to put back in. It became clear that we simply didn’t need to run two freezers any more.

We ate up what we could – I had aubergine bake and broad bean risottos for lunch all week and my husband ate the Tesco lasagnes I’d stockpiled. The daughter, who was on the receiving end of my purge of unlabelled leftovers, was given what I thought were homemade salmon fishcakes but which turned out to be homemade corned-beef-hash cakes, which gave her an allergic reaction because they contained egg. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupidly lax. After that, the rest of the leftovers went in the bokashi for composting. (And, needless to say, I now label everything. Religiously.)

The two freezer drawers in the fridge-freezer have turned out to be quite enough for our needs now and the switched-off upright freezer has gone to a new home via Freecycle (to a family that's growing their own veg and turning it into wholesome baby food).

So that’s two carbon-hungry appliances down. I’ll be interested to see what impact this has on our electricity bill (though with the rising fuel prices, I suspect it won't show much difference, natch). And it all began with a bit of dusting.

Now I just have to get the daughter to eat my (egg-free) salmon fishcakes again . . .