If you are hosting a holiday party in the coming weeks you might be concerned with the logistics and planning of the event. Making sure that you have all of the right ingredients for the recipes that you want to serve, having plenty of drinks and snacks on hand to satisfy any craving, and decorating your home to welcome your guests with holiday spirit.

Holiday parties are a great way to create loving memories with friends and family. But, they can also have a big impact on your monthly budget. This is especially true for the utility bills.

Many people have any idea of how much their power bill is going to be each month, based on past history and usage. But, the power bill during the holiday season is an outlier as it is impacted heavily on holiday cooking and decorations.

Luckily, there are some things that you can do to ensure that your holiday party doesn’t send your utility bill off the charts. Here are some tips for hosting an energy-efficient holiday party:

• Being proactive in these situations is always the best approach. This means, create a plan so that you know exactly what is going to be cooked and when. This way you can plan to have your oven on only for a certain block of time. When you let your oven heat up to cook something, and then turn it off only to let it heat up again in an hour to cook something else, you are using up to 45% more energy than if you just leave the oven on.
• When you do have meals in the oven, use the light to check on their progress as opposed to opening the door. When you open the door to the oven, you allow 20% of the heat to escape, which increases the amount of time that the oven needs to be on. Turn the oven off for the last 15 minutes of the cook time. There is plenty of residual heat in the oven to finish off cooking the food.
• If you are trying to bring something to a boil, add a lid to the pot to keep the energy contained. This will reduce the amount of time the dish needs to be on the stove, and thus the amount of power that is used to cook it.

While you are cooking the meal, consider turning the temperature down on your heater. With your oven on, the temperature on your home increase a couple of degrees, so you can afford to have your thermostat turned down and still keep a comfortable temperature in your home. Follow these energy-saving tips to make sure your holiday party makes an impact on your guests and not your power bill.