5 household gadgets I cut the cord on to save big on my electric bill

• Chargers and power bricks
• Small kitchen appliances with clocks or displays
• Office equipment
• Entertainment consoles
• Smart home hubs or speakers
• Some quick tips

Power is a necessary wonder. Power bills are a necessary evil.

Face it — we live in an electronic, digital, and online world, all things that require energy consumption. Chances are high you own numerous electronic devices that all need to be plugged into the wall at one point or another, which slowly but surely adds watts and dollars to your monthly energy statement. The costs climb fast, and the next thing you know you’re paying hundreds of dollars to keep your devices on.

When they’re plugged in, many devices still pull energy from the wall — even if they’re not actively in use. They run on what’s called standby power, phantom energy, and essentially become something called “energy vampires.” These vampires are sucking the power from your walls and silently burdening your electric bill.

But there is a way to cut a few bucks from your bill. Whether you’re sitting at home or traveling for the holidays, you can unplug various little things in your household to reduce your energy bill. Is unplugging your toaster going to make a life-changing difference? No. But think about your electricity bill like trickles of water into a bucket — cut a few off, and the bucket doesn’t fill up as much (or as fast).

Chargers and power bricks

Especially for idle electronics

Let’s start with the smallest culprits — the ones that draw such a small amount of power they could be considered energy mosquitoes instead of full-fledged vampires. You probably keep chargers and power bricks plugged into their respective outlets because it’s convenient when your phone needs a quick energy top-off, or when your electric toothbrush runs out of juice after three months. While you only see the power transfer when your device’s display indicates a live charging session, the chargers and power bricks are pulling from your energy pool (and adding to your electric bill) any time they’re plugged in at all — even if they aren’t connected to anything.

Not just that, but the power leakage gets worse the higher wattage (or older the charger) you’re using. Modern chargers (like USB-C and USB-A) are more efficient at kinking the energy hose, so to speak, but they’re still non-zero. Meanwhile, older or low-quality chargers can pull up to one watt continuously. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but think about all the chargers you have plugged in at all times — there could be a lot of watts getting lost in the ether of your home.

Your larger power bricks (say, for a MacBook or gaming PC) can draw far more than that. Consider how hot those feel to the touch sometimes and yank them out of the wall when you aren’t actively using them.

Small kitchen appliances with clocks or displays

Like coffee machines, microwaves, and more

Most people keep kitchen appliances plugged in for convenience. At 7AM, you just want to press ‘Brew’ and push the bread right into the toaster — not plug in both the coffee machine and the toaster beforehand. The extra step would seem silly if it weren’t for the phantom energy they consume throughout the day and night when you aren’t using them. And when do you use them? Once a day — maybe — for less than five minutes. The rest of their 23 hours and 55 minutes is dedicated to sipping on the standby power pool.

Many kitchen appliances pull standby power if they’re plugged in — even if they don’t have a digital display on them. But those little device clocks aren’t so innocent, especially when it comes to sucking energy out of the wall. While you aren’t using them, you should definitely unplug anything with a digital clock, LED display, internal memory, touch screens, or sensor. The numbers may be small individually (five watts for your microwave, two watts for your coffee maker, etc.) but all day, 365 days a year, it adds up — especially depending on how many appliances you have in your culinary arsenal.

A pure mechanical appliance with no electronics (e.g., some older toasters, some kettles) draws no power when idle.

If your microwave display eats 15-60 kWh and your coffee maker consumes 8-26 kWh a year, that not only boosts your carbon footprint but also your electric bill. You don’t really need to know that it’s 3:32PM in four different corners of your kitchen, so only plug these in during food prep and cooking times.

Office equipment

Printers, scanners, and monitors

Of course your printer would make your life difficult in yet another way. Whether you’re using an inkjet or laser printer, most of them don’t ever fully power down unless you unplug them. While they’re in their standby power paradise, they’re often still connected to Wi-Fi or network modules, run their internal temperature stabilizers, and maintain their auto-wake circuitry. Many printers sit idle 99% of the time and can draw anywhere from 3-5 watts in standby, depending on the model.

Scanners are the same. Their internal computing systems are constantly alive — even if they look like they’re asleep — and contain warming elements, sensors, and connectivity modules. Keeping them plugged in 24/7 does mitigate the 30 seconds it might take to boot up from an unplugged state, but it’s likely that you use a scanner even less than a printer. Draw some patience so your scanner doesn’t have to draw phantom wattage and add a few bucks to your annual power bill.

I hope you’re monitoring your monitors. Most modern LCD and LED models technically turn off, but whenever they’re plugged in, power is flowing. They may even keep an internal circuit powered up to detect any input signals, and if they have a USB hub or port system, you best bet the monitor is maintaining power in those ports. Printers and scanners may draw more power than your monitors, but every trickle counts.

More on this later, but most people keep their office equipment close enough together to connect it all to power via a power strip. The most convenient way to save time, convenience, and energy is to connect all these devices to a power strip with a single on/off switch. That way, you don’t have to unplug a bunch of different devices all the time.

Entertainment consoles

Sleepy time, PS5

If I mentioned toasters earlier, you knew this was coming. Game consoles (like the PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch 2) all pull phantom energy to stay connected to your network, download updates automatically, charge your controllers, enable quick-resumes, and more. Sure, you can put them to sleep, but they can still use a few watts continuously depending on your settings.

You can tweak some settings or put your console into a ‘power saving’ mode to not take such drastic unplugging measures. For example, a PlayStation 5 uses just under 2W in regular standby mode, but enabling “Power Saver” mode reduces the usage down to 0.5W.

Is it a huge drain? No. But none of the items on this list are. However, when you add them all up, the savings trickle turns into a stream. If you know you won’t be gaming for a while, unplugging your console can chip a substantial chunk off your energy bill at the end of the year.

Smart home hubs or speakers

Hey Alexa, you’re an energy vampire

Sorry, Alexa. Smart hubs and speakers always draw power when they’re plugged in, even when you aren’t actively (or accidentally) summoning them. Speaking of summoning, think about it — how does your Echo Show know you’re talking to it? It has an ‘always listening’ or ‘always ready’ mode so it can wake up and respond to your requests. They also maintain power to stay connected to Wi-Fi, push updates, and run any processes in the background. Not to mention, if your smart hub has a display, that takes energy to remain always-on.

The draw here is also small (typically one-to-four watts for small speakers and three-to-six for larger hubs), but the 24/7 power load adds up over the course of a year. If you know you’ll be out of town or too busy to use it for a period of time, it’s worth pulling the plug to save some cash.

Some quick tips

Because no one wants to give up convenience

Why do we keep all the devices above plugged in 24/7 in the first place? Convenience. Plugging a device in before you use it is a tiny extra step we’ve become too lazy to take, frankly. I’m completely guilty of this myself — unplugging all of these things one by one all the time can get cumbersome. But, there are ways to maintain your convenience and chip away at your power bill.

For instance, I use a power strip (with a surge protector) for all my work-from-home office equipment. At the end of the day, when it’s time to log off, I go under my desk and flip the kill switch on the power strip — effectively cutting off the power. And yes, a switched power strip actually does cut standby power — as long as it’s off.

You could even go as far as using a smart plug with schedules to take the manual work out of cutting costs on your energy bill.