Conscientious Cook: Do You Unplug Appliances at Night?

What are your "green" habits and compromises when it comes to kitchen appliances? So many of our appliances these days come with a little computer display of some sort. Super handy when we need them, but these displays also draw a small amount of power in order to stay on and keep the appliance ready to go. It's not much, but it can add up over time.

My husband and I argue about this one sometimes. He insists that unplugging appliances at night saves money and a noticeable amount of energy. I'm of the opinion that the appliance drawing the most power - the refrigerator - is the one appliance we can't turn off. The other appliances are drawing such an insignificant amount of power when they're at rest on the counter, why bother?

But then I sometimes tip the other way and think that maybe the "insignificant" amount of energy we save by unplugging the microwave (and its glowing clock) at night might add up over time. It's the principle of the thing - if we can save a little energy, no matter how small, shouldn't we do it?

One compromise we've tried is putting all our small appliances on the same power strip. This way we can just flick off the power strip when we leave the kitchen for the night instead of unplugging each individual appliance. The fridge and stove (another glowing clock source) stay plugged in - the former because we need it plugged in and the latter because it's plug is in an inconvenient location.

The microwave continues to frustrate us. Resetting that darn blinking clock every morning is almost inconvenient enough to offset the satisfaction gained from unplugging the appliance for 8 hours.

What are your "green" habits and compromises when it comes to kitchen appliances?

(Image: Flickr member trekkyandy licensed under Creative Commons)

Posted originally from: TheKitchn

Comments (8)

No, I don't. The microwave is the only appliance we have with a screen, and it's the only clock in the kitchen.

The only thing that stays plugged in is the fridge. But I don't unplug things at night -- I unplug them whenever I'm done with them.

I find I generally don't need a clock in the kitchen, so if I ever do need to tell time, I'll just put my cell phone in my apron pocket and pull it out when need be. I've thought about putting up a small clock on the wall, but I don't have a plug that would work for it, so it would need to be battery-operated.

I have all my appliances hooked onto a power strip, including the microwave, toaster oven, rice cooker etc. I turn it *on* whenever I need to use any of the appliances and turn it immediately off after each use. The only things that I have plugged in the kitchen are the fridge and the coffee maker (it doesn’t have any displays and I am too disoriented in the morning before coffee to remember to plug anything in). As for telling time in the kitchen, I have this really cool device on the kitchen wall – a clock. (No one used them anymore?)

Everything stays plugged in ... all the time.

I unplugged appliances such as my George Foreman Grill and rice cooker.

Some notes from an electronics guy:
>if the appliance has no display or remote and an on-off switch that you actually move, then likely it draws no power when it is off.
>if it has a touch-on switch then start with 10 watts for the circuitry, LCD display (silver/black) add 5 watts, LCD backlight add 5 watts, fluorescent display (microwave, DVD player) add 10 watts.
>appliance makers always say in their instructions to unpplug when not in use to avoid liability in the remote chance it catches fire.
>so a nominal 20 watts per appliance times, say, 5 appliances equals 100 watts, like leaving a porch light on all the time.
>to put it in perspective, a Safeway store uses about 200 to 500 kilowatts.
Math: 250 kW x 16 hours x 10¢ per KW-h
equals $400 of electricity per day.

I live in a small downtown apt where the kitchen/living room is one open space. I have my computer desk, tv entertainment center, record player and floor lamps along one wall. They are all plugged into two Belkin power strips http://is.gd/a4NJC keyed into the same wireless remote switch so i can turn the strip on and off from across the room. I have the remote switch by my landing strip (which is kind of in the center of my small apt). When I come home from work the power strip comes on and when i go to bed everything gets turned off. I switched over to 100% CLF lights, and leave my AC/Heat off when i'm not in the house.

That was one of the first things we did to get our electricity bill down in our new place. It was running more that $120 for Electricity Gas. We managed to cut it down by 33% (about$75-$80 now) by just smartly using our appliances.

1. Installed separate power extensions for appliances we want to keep running all times (Tivo, Vonage, Phone etc.) and ones we would like to switch off when we are not using (TV, Reciever, Game Console etc.). Some days we end up not even turning on these devices due to our busy schedule

2. Unplug all kitchen appliances after we are done using them - Toaster, Coffee maker etc...

3. some other advices - switch to CFLs, replace 5 bulb fixtures in bathrooms with 3 or lower bulb fixtures (depending on size of bathroom),