Green Media

We have vampires living in our house. In fact, several of them I don't think we could live without. I know that Jesse, in particular, would probably die from asphyxiation if I took them away.

I'm talking about our electronics. The plasma TV, both of our PC's, the DirecTV boxes, the Playstation and Wii (yes, he's spoiled). Even when turned off, they're really in standby mode, and they're sucking electricity right out of the wall. According to this study (link is in the article), approximately 13% of the average American household's electricity use is due to these "vampire" devices.

Even your cell phone charger sucks power when it's not charging your phone!

Jesse and I are tackling this one by plugging our energy suckers into power strips, which we're keeping turned off if we're not using the devices. So far our PC's, the bedroom TV, and paper shredder all set up. The entertainment center is going to take some tweaking, but it should be set up this weekend.

Now the hard part: remembering to turn them OFF!