The house that I have lived in all my life was built in 1925, that’s 85 years old, and is still standing today. Back then, houses were just houses; however, today new houses being built are mondo-mega-masterpieces. What I found researching was that most websites stated how to build energy efficient houses. Well, what if you don’t want to tear down a perfectly good house to make it green? I did a little research and found the answers. And yes, if you want you can add solar panels to the roof of your house, and transition to LED Light bulbs, but we’ve heard all of this before.
First of all, most old houses have an attic in the pitch part of the roof. A simple solution for rising heating or cooling prices is to add more insulation to the roof (that’s the easiest to reach, rather than tearing out the walls of your house.)
Another problem we have in our house is the windows. On the main floor the windows are original to the house, meaning that when the wind blows, they rattle a little. So people’s solution would be to paint the windows shut, but if you want to be able to open the windows, a cheap and surprising solution is bubble wrap. I know it’s not the nicest looking solution, but hey, it works!
As the earth moves, so do buildings and houses. Cracks are naturally bond to appear in walls ceilings as the year’s role on. The best way to make them seamlessly disappear is to fill them. Not only does this make things look nicer, but it helps insulate your house!
I’ve been talking a lot about insulation, and keeping the heat/cold inside your house. Well, that’s not the only solution to a more energy efficient house. In my house, we still had the original toilets. These toilets used 3.4 gallons per flush which is a ridiculous amount of water used! Toilets today can use as little as 1 gallon (think in terms of buying a gallon of milk).
Considering new carpets? Bringing nature inside is a nice way to say, “Hey, my house is built, not on this earth, but with this earth.” An easy way to do this is to install straw, wool, or seagrass, carpet. All of these materials are natural and depending on the company providing the material, harvesting in an environmentally friendly way. http://www.surfacethreads.com/natural-fibers.php. Of course, buying a carpet made out of recycled carpets is a nice way to reuse.
Speaking of recycling, yes we can all do it. Is it really going to kill you to have to bins, one for trash and one for recycling? No. So just do it, I know you’ve been told 4 billion times to recycle, so just do it.
For the gardeners out there, keep a pitcher by the sink, and instead of pouring that almost empty glass of water down the drain, pour it in the pitcher, and use that to water your plants. Also, collecting rainwater in a bin outside is the same idea, just on a bigger scale.

I hope some of these ideas you hadn’t thought of, and will put into use. It’s easy to find other energy-saving ideas on Google, but here are a few websites that I found particularly useful!
http://www.worldwatch.org/resources/go_green_save_green.
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20030508a1.asp.
http://energyboomer.typepad.com/energyboomer/2008/09/how-to-make-a-drafty-old-house-into-an-efficient-comfortable-home-part-4.html.

Hope these help!

    Claire