Goodbye Standby

No matter how resourceful you are, there are times when you need to buy new. For me this can mean shopping around to see if I can upgrade some of my defunked equipment to something a little more energy saving, or if it's something I've never had to buy before, ensuring that the make or model I pick out is as Eco friendly as possible. With the wee man on the verge of walking and exercising his right to grab, pull, shake and destroy everything that dares to get in his way, we've had to start thinking hard about how we manage space and protect our stuff from his wrath.

As I've mentioned before my husband is quite the hoarder, and while sometimes I speculate as to why a 31 year old man might have a fledgling collection of tradition dripping pots, his mountain of second hand stuff does come in handy sometimes. For example the Beef dripping pot now holds our toothbrushes and we're never at a loss for various things to keep other things in. One area though where we've had to get something new is for our wires and electrical equipment, the toy de jour for my son (what is it with wires that make them such an attractive play thing?).

Now we're not really a gadget ridden household, but like most people we have a TV, computer and what I suppose you could class as our one indulgence, the Nintendo Wii (bought with the Wii fit in an attempt to shift the last of my baby weight). So in one of our recent attempts at re-organising we've bought some wire tidies and have introduced an Energenie Multi Plug Automatic Standby Shutdown. These are great things to have in the house because not only to they offer you a multiple pug extension lead, they also have a handy infrared sensor that works from you TV remote to shut down all appliances placed on standby. There is also an extra plug that can be left on once in a while say if you're recording something through the night, which is a bonus.

Leaving things on standby used to be one of things we were occasionally guilty of, simply because we'd done such a good job of hiding the plugs and wires from the Shugmeister that we could barely get to them ourselves, at least not without some Olympic style maneuvers and bumped funny bones (which simply aren't funny). And yes, sometimes we left them on because we're lazy. So hopefully those days are behind us. Certainly it's proved to be a lot easier to be energy saving since we got this, and while we'll have to wait until the next electricity bill to see if it has saved us money, it stands to reason that we will over the space of a year.

So if you're looking for an effective way to hide your plugs and wires, without falling into bad standby habits, I'd recommend this product. At £15.99 including VAT and postage it's a good investment considering the savings could last for years. If you go the Energenie website (click on the widget below) you'll also find other products at a range of prices, including a Power Saving Meter that lets you know which of you appliances is using up the most energy.