How can I save energy without making sacrifices?

AThere is a parable about cake and the consumption of cake that Guru is very tempted to call upon, but the way you’ve worded your question pretty much gives you the answer you need. If you want to save energy you need to switch things off, run things for less time, and consider switching your current things for more efficient things, at least if it makes mathematical sense.

Those pointless networkconnected smart devices aren’t helping. Your voice assistant sits there dribbling your precious electricity into its silicon brain day in, day out, just waiting for the odd occasion that you ask it a straightforward question only to get a dumb answer. And that’s just the tip: that AV amp you leave switched on so that you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of selecting a source when you switch on the screen; that old TV in the kitchen, with its woefully inefficient standby mode; the laptops, constantly plugged in and trickling juice because woe betide you if you switch on at anything less than 100%. All wasteful. However little these things draw, it soon adds up. GaGu’s most recent experimental lights-off day somehow cost him £4.32 and a very stubbed toe.

Essentially, this means flipping from your current laissez-faire electricity attitude to one that is strict to the point of being unhealthy. Terrorise your family by marauding through the house with a TP-Link Tapo Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring (£15) in hand, plugging it between your devices to see exactly what everything sucks. Go completely bananas with the Emporia Vue (£130), wrapping its monitoring dealies around the wires running to eight of your home’s key circuits to discover which zones are the most egregious. Write your kids out of your will if they leave their TV on.