There's an article in this summer's "Co-op America Quarterly" about ways to save energy. Some of the suggestions are things that most of us already know about and may even do, such as not heating (or cooling) unused rooms, or using the air dry option on your dishwasher. But here's an idea that was new to me:unplugging your electronics when they're not in use. Today's electronics, tv's, dvd's, kitchen appliances, etc, all use a small amount of electricity all the time. And you can save 5% of your electric bill by turning them off.

Why do I need the radio, coffee pot, and microwave telling me what time it is when there's a perfectly good clock in the kitchen? And I can hear the HD tv humming even when it's turned off. So I've started unplugging things. With the tv/vcr/dvd/stereo everything is on a power strip, so I just turn that off.

Since I have several shows and films set up to tape, I have to check first to see if it makes sense to unplug the tv. And at first I was worried that the tv would forget everything, as the previous tv did. But it doesn't.

Quarterly The website is a bit out of date and you can't see the summer newsletter yet, but you can get an idea of what this organization does.

I've tried to group a lot of those sorts of items on power strips, for example all the TV/VCR/Stereo/satellite is on one, the telephone answerer, cordless phones, cell phone chargers, the computers etc so I can shut them all off at once.

Then I went the next step and put each of the power strips on timers set to cut off the power at bed time. We rarely look at the TV, but if it does happen to be on at 8:00, the whole works shuts down and the kids know that it's nearly bedtime.

The only problem is that the timers draw a bit of current too...

A few years back I lived for a year in my camper and powered it with single 85 watt solar panel to charge 12 volt batteries. I learned to be pretty stingey with electricity, but I don't think it really cramped my style that much.

We keep talking about needing to supply more energy, but the truth is that we could all get by just fine on a heck of a lot less.