Do you unplug items that you don’t use ? They call these vampire appliances and the average household has 20 of these in their house using electricity when they are NOT in use. They suggest you unplug everything from cell phone chargers to televisions that aren’t being watched. So what do you do in your house?
I wish we were more diligent about this! I’d love to have a cheaper power bill
Be sure to catch up on all the previous Let’s Save Some Money posts.
Jason says
We have everything in our house plugged into surge strips. When we go on vacation, we just turn off the surge strips, then unplug them.
Jaime says
My husband thinks I’m crazy but I shut down our desktop (which we only use a couple times a month) and unplug the laptop when it’s shut down. I also regularly unplug the toaster and cell phone charger. I need to get some power strips so we can shut down the tv, dvd, etc.
Emily says
I recently told my husband about this, and he didn’t believe me that keeping things plugged in even though they’re not being used still uses power. Now I have proof…..thank you everyone who has experienced a drop in your bill for posting.
I have been trying to do this little by little. I unplug my toaster every morning after I use it, and I go around after my husband and unplug his cell phone charger. My kids lamps in their rooms don’t need to be plugged in since it’s light out when they wake up and when they go to bed, so tonight I’m going to unplug them. I could never unplug my coffee pot…..I have it set to go off each morning, and I don’t think I want to reset it every night. I like the idea of a surge for all the TV electronics……,maybe I’ll try that.
Kelly B says
Great post and comments. I unplug a few things like cell chargers, crock pot and toaster, but hadn’t really thought about things like lamps, printers, etc. We are horrible about computers. We have three laptops and the chargers stay plugged in 24/7. I’m going to try to convince my husband to do an “unplugged” month to see what difference it makes on our electric bill. (Might be a challenge – he also insists on keeping two outdoor lights, a kitchen light and hallway light on overnight. It kills me!)
Randi says
We unplug just about everything we can. I treat it like turning off the lights, when I leave a room I scan around and make sure things are unplugged and off. Of course there are things we don’t unplug, such as washer, dryer, fridge, stove. Our main things are cell chargers, lamps, small appliances (I stopped keeping these on the counter since I would forget to unplug after use, now I can’t forget). We found it to help us out quite a bit.
Laura says
We’ve been doing this for about 2 years now and it does make a difference in our electric bill. Our house is ALL electric, so what can be unplugged when not in use is unplugged with the exception of the computer. DH won’t let that one go completely down.
We recently had a bad storm come through and a lightning strike was fairly close. We lost the computer, modum and the phone to the surge. Everything else was fine mainly because most things were unplugged.
Andrea L. says
I am so glad there are others out there who do this…everyone I know thinks I am crazy!! Everything gets unplugged in our house except for the fridge, microwave and oven (because they are built-ins and it is too hard to get to the plug), water softener and well pump. I have even gone a step further and almost completely stopped using my dryer. EVERYTHING gets air dried!! The only thing that still goes in the dryer is towels for about 10 minutes to fluff and blankets for about 15 minutes to finish drying. Otherwise the dryer is just a “space taker upper” and is unplugged!!
These things do draw power even when not in use. Why should we pay any more than we have to to companies who already make a lot of money!! It might take a while to get used to doing this but we have been doing this for almost 2 years now and even my kids know to unplug not just turn off!! :)
7thheavenfan says
It definitely makes a HUGE difference! We keep our computer/internet and tv on power strips and then just flip them off when not in use. We love seeing the savings! Now if I could just remember to unplug the toaster everyday…
mandi says
this really works! we went around the house and unplugged everything. every night we unplugged the tv and computer. we set our ac a couple degrees higher and our water heater a little lower & our bill dropped $75!! we have slacked on this lately so i’m glad you posted about it. when we did it we realized we had stuff like lamps plugged in that we never even used!
Chris says
We need to do this. We call DS20 Mr Gadget so there’s no telling what all he has plugged in. If it’s an electronics item, he probably already has it. He has 4 computers and probably all of them are plugged up except the laptop to the charger, but the charger is still probably plugged up! No telling how cheap we could get our bill.
Rachelle R says
i unplug things all the time and it drives me nuts when my husband forgets to do it, especially with his phone charger. i saw a significant drop in our electricity bill. we unplug large appliances like the tv and computer when we are out of town for a long period.
Bridget says
We have our TV and electronics plugged into power strips and turn them off when we aren’t using them. My computer is the big one. I forget to turn it off…I have to leave the power strip on because our phone and fax are plugged into the strip. I try to make sure all of our chargers are unplugged when not in use.
I also started having my kids in charge of different lights and they are in charge of turning them off if someone leave them on.
Sharon says
We unplug the phone charger and toaster. Most everything else is a large appliance or the TV that does stay on.
Ellen says
I wish I was better about this. In England, the outlets have on/off switches, so you can turn off the power to an outlet without having to unplug things and plug them back in. Much easier. I really need to focus more on this – the crockpots and other appliances in the kitchen do NOT need to be plugged in when not in use.
marie says
I am SO GLAD you posted this…so true and even if power were free obviuosly what is going on in the Gulf shows we should reduce power no matter what. Now, as I trip over my soap box, I will say if you have the cordless phones with multiple hand sets, you only have to have the main one plugged in at all times…the other pieces are just chargers and aren;t necessary for the system to work…just charge al lof your phones on the main unit :-)
Tara Kate says
We keep the toaster, coffee maker, ice tea maker, printer, DVD player, and chargers unplugged when not in use. When we go on vacation we also unplug the TV.
Tabatha says
We started to do this and we immediately saw a $10 savings on our next months electric bill. We have consistently done this among other things to help lower our electric bill and we have successfully dropped it by over $50 since this time last year. It is definitely worth it to check. There are very few things we leave plugged in unless needed like fridge and freezer. We even unplug our microwave and window air conditioner when not in use!