The first month in a new flat is the ideal time to make sustainability changes. You don’t have established habits to overcome. You’re already setting up new patterns. The interventions you make now compound for the entire length of your tenancy.
This article provides the first-month checklist for tenants moving into a flat.
Week 1: assess and plan
Read the meters
Note the gas and electricity meter readings on day one (and ideally daily for the first week). This baseline matters for tracking improvements and catching unexpected high consumption.
Find the boiler and learn it
Locate the boiler. Read the instructions (or look up the model online). Understand:
- How to set the temperature.
- How to program the heating schedule.
- What ‘eco’ settings exist.
- The current temperature setting (often higher than necessary).
Audit the bulbs
Walk through every room and identify any non-LED bulbs. Note the wattage and bulb type. Calculate the cost of replacement (£3-8 per bulb).
Note the appliance situation
Identify:
- Fridge, model and approximate age.
- Washing machine, model, age, and cycle options.
- Dishwasher (if any), same.
- Oven and hob, type (gas/electric/induction).
- Hot water system, combi boiler? Tank? Electric?
Check for draughts
On a windy or cold day, walk through the flat with a smoking incense stick or thin paper. Note any obvious draughts around:
- Window frames.
- Door frames.
- Letterbox.
- Keyhole.
- Light switches on external walls.
- Ceiling-wall joins.
Week 2: easy interventions
Set up the heating schedule
Program the thermostat with a sensible schedule:
- Before waking: 30 minutes of heating to 19°C.
- When away: 14-16°C minimum.
- Before returning home: 30 minutes of heating to 19°C.
- Overnight: 16-17°C.
Lower the boiler temperature
Set the boiler to 55-60°C if it’s currently higher. This is hot enough for normal use and prevents legionella.
Install switched plug strips
Set up at the main entertainment area (TV, set-top box, sound system). Switch off when not in use.
Install low-flow showerhead insert
£10-25 from any DIY shop. Takes 5 minutes to install. Reduces water and energy use by 30-40 percent.
Replace any halogen or incandescent bulbs
Replace the most-used bulbs first. £30-80 total for a typical flat.
Switch washing machine to 30°C as default
Change the default setting on the machine. Most loads work fine at 30°C.
Week 3: addressing draughts
Install draught-excluder tape
£5-10 per roll. Apply to:
- Window frames where draughts were detected.
- Door frames.
Install letterbox brush
£8-15. Stops cold air shooting through the letterbox.
Buy a heavy door draught excluder
Long sausage-shaped cushion that sits against the gap under the front door. £10-15.
Install a keyhole cover
£3-5. Self-closing flap that stops cold air through the keyhole.
Consider radiator reflectors
For radiators on external walls. £10-20 for a roll. Tape behind radiators to reflect heat into the room.
Week 4: bigger interventions
Buy and install heavy curtains
If existing curtains are thin or inadequate, invest in heavy lined curtains for main rooms. £80-200 total. Open during daylight in winter; close at dusk to retain heat.
Consider a smart energy monitor
If your supplier offers a smart meter with in-home display, request installation. Free in most jurisdictions.
Switch to a renewable energy tariff
15 minutes online. Often saves money. Saves 1-3 tonnes CO2/year.
Set up routine maintenance reminders
Add to your calendar:
- Monthly: meter reading.
- Quarterly: bleed radiators (during heating season).
- Annually: review tariff, check bills, full audit.
The cumulative first-month impact
A tenant who completes this checklist will have:
- Heating energy reduced by 20-35 percent.
- Hot water energy reduced by 25-40 percent.
- Electricity use reduced by 10-20 percent (from LED switch, standby elimination).
- Water use reduced by 30-40 percent (from low-flow showerhead).
- Switched to renewable electricity.
Total annual savings: £400-1,000 in utility costs. Total annual carbon reduction: 1.5-3 tonnes.
Total cost of interventions: £100-300.
Payback period: well under one year.
The first-month advantage
Doing this in the first month is significantly easier than doing it later because:
- You’re already establishing routines; new habits integrate naturally.
- You haven’t accumulated furniture and possessions that make installations difficult.
- You’re in the “improving the flat” mindset of new tenancy.
- The savings compound for your entire tenancy.
The portable purchases
Almost everything on this list follows you to your next flat:
- LED bulbs.
- Switched plug strips.
- Low-flow showerhead insert.
- Draught excluders.
- Heavy curtains.
- Radiator reflectors.
The £100-300 investment becomes the kit you carry through all future flats.
Related: Urban Sustainability Myths That Waste Your Time
The honest summary
The first month in a new flat is a unique opportunity. The interventions in this checklist are mostly cheap, reversible, and transformative for energy use and bills. Completing them sets up sustainable defaults that benefit you for years.
For someone moving into a new flat, this checklist is among the highest-use things you can do. The financial savings, environmental impact, and quality-of-life improvements (less noise from inefficient appliances, better thermal comfort, less to worry about) compound throughout the tenancy.
Related: Eco-Friendly Swaps That Actually Stick (And Ones That Don’t)
What an experienced household looks like
It is worth being honest about what good practice in this area looks like after several years of attention. It is not a magazine-perfect lifestyle. The bins are sorted but not labelled in artisan calligraphy. The pantry has a small set of jars rather than a coordinated wall display. The flat smells like whatever was cooked, not like a perfumed lobby. The energy bill is lower than the neighbourhood average but the household still has a TV, a kettle, and a freezer.
What is different is the defaults. The reusable bag is genuinely in the everyday bag. The thermostat is genuinely scheduled. The food in the fridge is genuinely used before being wasted. The shopping is genuinely planned rather than improvised. None of this requires the household to think harder about sustainability than the average household; it requires the defaults to have been set once and then left alone. The mental load of good practice is, in the long run, significantly lower than the mental load of constantly negotiating with disposable habits.
Related: How to Stay Motivated With Eco Habits (When the World Feels Hopeless)
How to put this into practice this week
The most reliable way to translate a guide like this into something that actually changes your week is to pick the single highest-use change in it and ignore everything else for the first fortnight. The rule is the same one that makes physical training work: load is fine, variety is fine, but the consistent application of a small number of well-chosen movements is what produces results. Sustainability follows the same logic. The dozen interesting interventions you have just read about will all matter at some point. The two you build into your routine first will matter the most.
If you genuinely cannot pick, default to the intervention with the strongest financial signal. Where money and impact line up, the habit forms easily because the reinforcement happens monthly on a bill rather than abstractly in the climate news. Once that habit is invisible, the next one is easier to add. Six months of one small habit at a time produces a meaningfully different household, and you will barely notice the transition while you live through it.
The starter checklist
| Point | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Read the meters | Note the gas and electricity meter readings on day one (and ideally daily for the first week). |
| Audit the bulbs | Walk through every room and identify any non-LED bulbs. |
| Check for draughts | On a windy or cold day, walk through the flat with a smoking incense stick or thin paper. |
| Set up the heating schedule | Program the thermostat with a sensible schedule: |
| Lower the boiler temperature | Set the boiler to 55-60°C if it’s currently higher. |
Sources and further reading
Frequently asked questions
For genuinely reversible items (low-flow inserts, plug strips, LED bulbs, draught excluders), no permission needed. For permanent changes (replacing the boiler, installing insulation), discuss with landlord.
Spread over 4 weekends, the total time is about 6-8 hours. Most weeks involve a single 1-2 hour session.
Most interventions are portable (LEDs, plug strips, showerhead, draught excluders all come with you). Only fully embed for stays of 2+ years.
Sometimes, particularly for things like radiator bleeds, boiler servicing, repair of broken seals. Worth asking. Most other items are tenant-funded but tenant-portable.
