Goodness knows, we could all do with finding as many ways as possible to keep our energy consumption - and therefore alarmingly rising bills - at a sensible level right now.

But we also know that unless those ways are easy and painless enough to take on board and maintain, we’re probably not going to continue doing them.

All of these energy saving tips should fit both those requirements and hopefully become things you can get into the habit of doing without too much effort or discomfort.

Living Room

Turn the lights off. I know you know this, but it bears repeating and remembering that the simple act of turning off lights in whatever room you’re not in, is a great energy-saving habit to get into.

Don’t have any bulky furniture in front of a radiator. It will absorb a high percentage of the heat being emitted which means you’ll have to run your heating for longer for your room to warm up.

Close your curtains at dusk. It helps keep the cold out and the heat in.

Turn down the brightness on your TV. Yes, I know this sounds weird, but here’s why it’s a way of saving energy. When TV sets are packaged for sale or display, they are set at much higher levels of brightness and contrast than really necessary. (It’s done so the screens look brighter and more appealing in illuminated shop displays). These default settings are much brighter than you need in your living room and mean the TV is using more power to maintain them. Turning down the brightness saves a surprising amount of energy

Kitchen

Keep your freezer full. A filled freezer is far more energy efficient than a half-empty one. This is because freezers expend most energy when they have to cool down the warm air that gets in when you open the door to take food out. And try to make sure what’s in there is packaged, labeled and neatly stored making it easy to access, so food doesn’t get buried in the far corners and go unused (of course I wouldn’t know anything about that. Ahem…. )

Defrost your freezer at least once a year. No, it’s not my favourite job either, but worth it when you know that frost build up in a freezer means the motor has to work harder, which in turn means it’s using more energy. And if you need any persuading, how about the knowledge that it’s been calculated that defrosting your freezer can save between £100 and £200 a year.

Dust your fridge. Specifically the coils at the back of your fridge, that is. Not always possible to do, I know, but if you can this is a surprisingly effective way of improving the energy consumption and lifespan of your fridge, because if the coils get dusty the fridge has to work a lot harder and therefore uses more energy. According to Friends of the Earth, keeping your fridge’s coils clean can improve your fridge’s efficiency by up to 30%.

This next one doesn’t apply to either your fridge or your freezer, obviously

Switch off your appliances at the wall. Almost all appliances can be turned off when they’re not in use, and almost all of them drain some degree of energy even when they’re not being used. Your microwave is a particular culprit where this is concerned because of keeping the clock and electronic controls powered. By the way, this also applies to your laptop.

When it is switched on, your microwave can be a helpful energy saver

Use your microwave to cook small amounts of food. Rather than the hob, or especially the oven, using your microwave is a 30% to 80% more energy efficient way of cooking food.

Use a lid on your pans. Unless a recipe specifically requires you not to, always put a lid on your pans on the hob. This keeps the heat in the pan, where it’s needed, rather than escaping into the air. Your food cooks faster, and you save on your gas or electricity bills. Win, win.

Only boil the amount of water you need in the kettle. Another super-simple tip that is a great energy-saving habit to get in to.

Make your dishwasher more energy efficient. Three for the price of one now. Two are things you may already do, the last is something I certainly didn’t know, so haven’t yet tried. But I will now! Don’t run the machine until it’s completely (but not overly) full. The overly full bit isn’t an energy tip per say. It’s just if you do that, the contents wont get properly washed and you’ll end up having to redo them by hand and that will use more hot water and consequently energy to heat it. If your dishwasher has an eco setting - and most modern machines to - use that. It will save up to 20% of energy by using less water at a lower temperature. And open the door at the end of the washing cycle and allow the crockery and cutlery to air dry. Running the heated drying cycle means more time (usually around 30 minutes), more energy, and more money on your bill. It can apparently also wear down your dishwasher over time because the appliance has to work hard to pump all that hot air through the exhaust vents. Who knew.

Washing - you and your clothes

Set your water thermostat to 60C. Most boiler thermostats in the UK are set to 65C. This is inefficient because at that temperature you have to cool the water you’ve spent money heating in order to use it. Also, heat loss from your boiler/hot water cylinder is increased at that setting. But don’t set it below 60C because that’s the temperature needed to kill bacteria.

Shower rather than bath. There are a whole heap of water saving tips in THIS BLOG but anything that requires hot water, requires energy to heat it, so because showering rather than bathing means using less hot water (unless you spend a long time in there, in which case, maybe you could cut that down a bit. Four minutes is the recommended length of time, just so you know), viz you’ll be using less energy as well.

There are so many energy saving and eco-friendly tips around clothes washing I could do a whole blog just on them (so maybe I will!) But here are a couple to be going on with

Wash everything on the shortest possible cycle. I was shamefully late to the party on this one, but I can confirm everything will come out of your machine just as clean washed for 30 mins as it does washed for two hours. And the amount of energy you’ll have saved from heating the water and running the machine for that long makes this an energy-efficient no-brainer.

Talking of which

Wash almost everything at 30C. Yes, there will be occasions when at 40C wash is necessary, but for the most part, a cool wash will do just as cleaning efficient a job as a hotter one.

Don’t tumble dry. If you can’t hang your clothes out outside (the ideal) then using a clothes horse (rather than draping your washed items over radiators) is a very close second best. And if you shake out and hang/drape them neatly, fewer of them will need ironing. Another win win double.

And finally

Get into the habit of charging your mobile during the day. Did you know that it generally takes under an hour to charge a phone from completely flat to 80%? And that it then takes another 60 to 90 minutes to reach 100%? That’s a maximum of 2.5 hours to fully recharge your phone’s battery. So if you put your phone on charge when you go to sleep, and assuming you leave it on charge for around 8 hours, you’re likely to be using 5.5 hours of extra power that you don’t need to. Also, leaving your phone on charge when it’s fully charged can decrease the battery’s lifespan. So two top notch reasons to charge up your phone during the day when you can pull the plug on it as soon as the battery reaches 100%.

If you have any easy energy saving tips you use, please do share them in the comments.