Be Smart With Energy This Halloween

The U.S. Department of Energy is calling on trick-or-treaters and their families to take three easy steps to keep your energy bill from haunting you this Halloween:

  1. If you’re decorating your house for Halloween or attending a Zoom costume party, choose an energy theme. You could dress up like a twisty fluorescent lightbulb, for example, or carve windmill, electric plugs or sunshine patterns into your jack-o-lantern. For stencils and ideas, visit energy.gov/energyween.
  2. Scare away the energy vampires haunting your house. Whenever you leave a device plugged in, it uses energy—even if it’s turned off. That includes phone chargers, computers and video game consoles. Unplug the device from the wall when you’re finished using it. If you have an extra TV in a room that you rarely use, leave it unplugged until the next time you want to watch it.
  3. Use power strips. It’s even easier to unplug unused appliances if you plug nearby devices into the same power strip. Then you simply have to pull one plug out of the wall—and plug one back in next time.