It’s been a year now since our old stove died. At 40 years old, it was our modern stove, with electric elements, as opposed to the much-older wood-fired model, which we expect to last forever.

At first, we thought we’d replace the electric stove right away. After all, there was all that holiday baking to do, and what kind of modern American cooks exclusively on wood?

But then I got pretty handy at controlling the oven temperature from the fire box: baffles open, damper closed, a stick of hickory. And besides, the stove was fired up anyway, to heat the house.

So then we thought we’d wait until spring. And then it was spring, and then summer. We got too busy to look for a new stove, and there was our daughter’s ballet program to pay for anyway.

We found we could build small fires in the wood stove and cook in the mornings when it was cool, or grill outdoors if it was hot. And we used the crockpot more, and bought a toaster oven.

And now here it is, almost winter again, so we might as well wait until spring to get a new stove.

In the meantime, we can’t help noticing how much our electric bill has dropped without that stove.

“It’s amazing how much you can save when you go appliance-free,” I told my husband, and it’s true I sounded a little more than wry. Sarcastic even, if you can believe it. Because there’s that broken washing machine . . .

But really, you don’t have to go appliance-free to save on your electric bill. Turning off lights, weather stripping around windows and doors, using appliances less, or more efficiently, can help a lot. Even drafty old houses lose a lot less heat when you hang thick curtains for the winter, over windows you’ve caulked or stretched plastic over.

A colleague shared the good news that National Grid, the power company, knocked $65 a month off her budget payment plan compared to last winter. “This after I stopped using the gas dryer last spring, didn’t use the oven most of the summer and nagged everyone about turning off lights and unplugging things,” she said.

Part of the reduction is a result of the lower price of natural gas this winter compared to last. But my colleague has also noticed a big drop in usage on her bill. I don’t know if she’s nagging any less.

National Grid is running a public service campaign to get people to reduce their energy consumption by 3 percent. Part of it is a bid to get people to convert from oil to natural gas, and to buy more energy-efficient appliances. But the company is also offering energy savings tips at www.powerofaction.com.

And nowhere does the company suggest you do without a modern oven. Cook foods together, yes, because a full oven is more efficient and because you can cut down the time the oven is on if you roast the chicken, bake the potatoes and make apple crisp all at the same time.

Use smaller appliances when you can, because a microwave, for instance, uses a lot less energy to reheat a meal than the oven or stovetop does. There’s actually a lot of good, common-sense information on the site.

And a lot of vagueness too. “If we all reduced our energy consumption by 3% a year for the next 10 years, the impact would be huge,” the Web site says. How huge? I don’t know. And I guess I worry that 3 percent is not enough. Because the world’s population continues to grow.

“Three percent?” my husband said. “That’s nothing! Everyone should be reducing consumption by 10 percent, or 20. And why do we have an incandescent light bulb in that lamp?”

Oops. I think it’s the only one left in the house. It’s in the light that sits on top of the radio, and the compact fluorescent made the radio buzz and we were trying to hear the ball game.

Oh well. The World Series will be over soon enough, and we can replace that last incandescent. And seal that leaky window in the back of the house, and hang up the winter curtains in the kids’ rooms, after I finish putting up plastic. Winter’s almost here.

The wood cook-stove has been running almost all the time that people are home. It’s keeping us warm, and fed too.

And maybe next spring we’ll get a modern stove. I think we are secretly hoping a nice, efficient gas model will appear one day, unannounced, on our doorstep. Stranger things have happened.

Margaret Hartley is the Gazette’s Sunday and features editor. Greenpoint appears in the Gazette’s print edition Sundays on the Environment page.

Have a question or a topic you’d like addressed on Greenpoint? Email greenpoint@dailygazette.net.