If you want to save money, it pays to understand your appliances.
Here's a question for you: Think about your refrigerator, your laptop and your cable box. Which one uses the most electricity?
If you answered "cable box", you win the prize!
Now think about the fact that the cable box - and you probably have a few of them - is plugged in all the time.
They are called "vampire appliances" for a reason. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, those cable and DVR boxes waste $2 billion worth of energy every year.
The problem with most of those boxes is that you can't turn them off or put them in "sleep mode." And because the cable or satellite company owns the boxes, you really don't have much control over how efficient they are.
It's up to the company for now, though the Department of Energy is looking at new efficiency standards for them.
And they aren't the only offender. The average American home has 24 different electronics items, and they use nearly one-third of our total energy consumption.
So what can you do?
Where you can, unplug the things you aren't using. Phone chargers, your electric toothbrush, anything plugged into an outlet is sucking down electricity.
And here's one other idea: Take all of the devices you can and plug them into a surge protector. When you're not using the devices, you can turn them all off with the flip of one switch.
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