This is a big house, and I have a lot of girls living here.
I put a clear plastic lockbox over the temperature control as a financial measure, because the family was raising the energy bills too much.
As the head of household, I know that it’s my task to decide how cool the big place is. Cooling isn’t free, and it is something our family doesn’t seem to understand just yet. Turning the A/C down just a few extra degrees can raise the utility bills by $130 or more. I love keeping cool as much as most people, although I have a limited budget. This is why I bought the lockbox, to make sure I was the only one who could access the temperature control and change the settings. That worked good for a few years, but recently it was time for a replacement and I got a smart temperature control unit. At first I thought this was amazing because a smart temperature control has so many more options and features than the older models. I abruptly realized that the smart temperature control could be accessed remotely through an app, so our lockbox was no longer doing the work. My girls are more tech-savvy than I am, and they figured out how to change the temperature control settings from their phones. I am not an IT specialist, and couldn’t figure out how to block them, so regretfully I removed the smart temperature control and hooked up the old dial thermostat once again. This is such a downgrade from the smart temperature control, but it’s the only way I have of protecting our investment and our budget.