Last year I took a pledge to unplug my mobile phone when it had finished charging instead of leaving it plugged in and devouring electricity or even worse, making calls while it was attached to the power socket. Although, I have forgotten a couple of times, on the whole I have stuck to this and while I know that each unplugging only saves a tiny amount of electricity, over time, I’m sure that has added up to quite a large amount. But, it didn’t stop there. I found that I started to think about other appliances that were left on stand by, or even fully operational but unused for long periods of time

The most glaringly obvious example was my computer. I rarely used it in the evening but I didn’t turn it off. It does go into standby mode if left unused, but even then it is still consuming power. So, now I switch it off. The same applies to the television. If no one is watching it, we turn it off.

Casting my eye around the house I discovered other less obvious electricity gobblers. The washing machine - I don’t think I had ever turned that off in all the time we had owned it. Now, after the laundry is finished, the machine is switched off. This even extends to the microwave - why on earth that needed to be left on simply so that we could see the clock I have no idea.

There is a nice bonus to all this switching off - our electricity bills are lower. We only save about £1 week, but that adds up over the course of year into a decent amount of money that can be spent on better things.

Kate is a mother and writer from the north of England. She blogs about writing at Kate Blogs About and posts her personal ramblings at itisi.