by Jonathon LaRosa

I was thinking of my hard earned money the other day. Instead of paying the mortgage, going out for a few drinks or putting fuel in my gas tank, I thought I’d just take those pretty pieces of green paper and carelessly toss them in the toilet. After a few seconds of watching the paper soak up that toilet water, I would just press the handle and flush it all down the drain.

However, in the end, I decided not to. It’d be overkill, right? I’m already doing something similar to that when I get that envelope with the plastic window showing my name and address on it every month.

My TV, desktop pc and anything else I usually keep plugged in, these things just draw power from the outlets. All this extra power just squandered, sucked into a unit that isn’t even being used.

And what’s more: Power equals money.

In my home state of Indiana, I am on average spending about nine cents per kW consumed. (Notice I didn’t say “used.”)

It doesn’t stop there though. Oh no, not even close!

Annually, my satellite television, DVR box and DVD player with five surround sound speakers and a big subwoofer uses over $100 worth of electricity per year to properly enjoy. About $15 of that $100 is wasted when I’m gone, out in the yard or asleep.

My old desktop pc used about $57 just to run it for a few hours throughout the week. When it was on “standby,” it used another $9 per year. But when it was on “sleep” mode – you know, that mode where you would think the pc was out of commission – it actually vampired another $40 per year! Heck, even turning my pc off and leaving it plugged in cost me up to $5 per year.

When will it end? I fretted. What will have to happen before the electric companies stop leaching every available cent I try to save for retirement…or at least that beer?

Well, the pc issue was resolved by something I chock up to divine intervention. The hard drive decided to take a bullet to its temple and voila! I bought a new laptop pc, which uses only one-third of the total power consumption and the “sleep” mode is as close to its name as possible today.

The television is still an issue. How do I unplug my television to save it from sucking money through the outlet while not causing more problems? My conclusion is that there is no real conclusion quite yet. If I unplug the strip that my TV, DVR box and DVD player with its full-on surround sound system are all plugged into then I run the dreaded risk of having to reprogram the satellite every time I turn on the TV.

That simply can’t even enter the realm of possibility!

The next best thing? I’ve plugged my TV and accessories into one strip and the DVR box (ie, satellite box) into another so they aren’t on the same circuit! I’m a genius! This way, I’m cutting the phantom power consumption by more than two-thirds. The satellite is still using energy, but a small price to pay to gain that extra two minutes of TV time without waiting on a satellite to realign itself or whatever the heck those things do to reprogram itself.

I read recently how, on average, Americans pay over $3 billion per year in electricity they don’t even use. That’s an average of $200 per household per year!

My quest to put an end to the rampant phantom power consumption has just begun. I’m tackling the kitchen next with its hellishly hot dishwasher, microwave and oven. Then onto the damp, marshy laundry room. After these giants of energy consumption have been felled, those remote spare bedrooms where a quick tug or two can unplug any unused televisions and alarm clocks by each bed!