Sure, we’d all love to have a refrigerator last us for 50 years, but odds are most of us are on our second, third, or even fourth fridge at this point in our lives.  New appliances are great, but unfortunately, the average refrigerator is the least efficient item in the household.  The average coolerator uses 15% of all the energy used in a household, and the fridge is by far the most energy-hogging piece of junk in the household!

Is there a way to cut down on the drain, when even modern fridges are energy hogs?  It’s simple:  fill the space.  The key to keeping things at a steady 37 degrees without working the fridge too hard is to keep the spaces filled, but not stuffed.  There needs to be ample room for air to circulate (so be careful not to block the blowers) but not so much room as there’s big gaps between stuff.  You want to aim for something like the picture above.

What about those of us who don’t exactly shop ahead of time?  Well, a simple trick is to fill the empty space with pitchers of water, or refill old soda bottles with H20.  This will fill the space, and help regulate the temperature.  That means you’ll not only use less electricity, you’ll also spare your fridge motor from a constant workout.

Using less energy and making appliances last longer?  Now that’s what I call saving money while saving the earth!

When it comes to the laundry room, there’s not a lot you can do to make it more technologically advanced and environmentally friendly.  There are lower-impact detergents and whatnot, but for the most part laundry technology is about the same as it’s always been, at least as far as dryers are concerned.  The dryer is the second-most energy-hogging appliance in the house, just behind the refrigerator.  However, there are ways you can cut back on your expenses and green up the laundry.

The crucial element would be to upgrade your washing machine.  New washers use less water, thus that means the clothes that come out of them require less drying (another tip might be to wring clothes out before dumping them into the dryer).  It uses less water *and* uses less energy to dry those sopping wet clothes.  That also means less detergent sloshing down the drain during the rinse cycle.

If you can’t quite make that big jump, then you can turn your laundry room into a multi-purpose room.  I couldn’t do that at my house (I have a laundry room/utility room combination already), but I do like the idea of turning the laundry room into some sort of home office combination.  There’s also something to be said of having the washer and dryer in the kitchen or off to the side from one of the bathrooms.  Fresh towels, right out of the dryer!  Any space you can save is useful.

Every day, you see a commercial for some wonder cleaning marvel.  “Throw out that old mop,” they proclaim.  “This mop is the wave of the future because of its revolutionary shape/construction/material!”  But are they really better than the standard “mass of cotton cords” mop that we all know by heart and instantly identify as the Platonic idea of a mop?  Well, in some ways, it depends on what kind of job you’ve got.  The New York Times put a wide variety of mops to the test to find out the results.

As it turns out, one of your better mop options is the same mop we all grew up with.  The classic, boring old string mop (from Lanier) turned out to be one of the better well-rounded mops, adept at handling both light work and heavy liquid soaking jobs.  Kind of a jack of all trades, master of none.  Plus it was cheaper than most of the other options.

However, if you need to clean up a wide variety of spills as best as possible, then you might need to take up an assortment of mops.  The best of the modern mixed with the traditional seems to be the O Cedar Microfiber Cloth Mop, which takes super-absorbent space-age materials and combines them with the traditional mop design for the best of both worlds.

These days, the incandescent light bulb is soon to be a thing of the past.  More and more, people are turning to LED lights and compact fluorescent lights to illuminate their home.  They use less electricity and are generally cheaper to produce.  They don’t provide the same type of light, but they’re better than candles.  Unless, of course, that candle is shaped like an incandescent bulb!

The light bulb candle comes from systemdesignstudios, a great group of designers.  The faux lightbulb is very well designed.  The wick burns on the inside of the bulb, allowing the bulb to keep its shape all the way to the bottom.  The candle’s light coming through the bulb allows it to cast light more like an actual bulb, rather than a candle.  And, of course, the bottom is screw patterned, in order to allow the bulb-candle to fit into any standard lamp.

I’m not sure how the wax would harm the lamp, but if I had a cool old lamp I couldn’t rewire, I’d definitely do this.

It’s an interesting idea in theory.  Basically, you’re recycling wasted indoor light (or light from the window sill) and using it to power your gadgets.  It’s called the CubeTube, from Solar Road Technologies, and it’s designed to fit comfortably over the top of the outlines of your average cubicle and turn your average fluorescent overhead lighting into energy.  Well, back into energy, I guess.

However, like the poster at TreeHugger, I don’t see just how much it could possibly gather, aside from eventually filling its small battery and maybe being a decent trickle charger for a cell phone or rechargeable battery device.  Maybe, if you’re lucky, you could gather enough energy to power a USB device.  I’d rather see one made to sit on top of a computer tower, or a computer monitor rim.  That’d be a flatter surface, and one that could support a whole lot more photovoltaic panels than the rim of a cube wall.

Still, I’d give it a shot.  Something is better than nothing, right?

It’s a one-stop morning machine.  With one wireless unit, you can crank up the morning weather report, check your email, AND make your morning cup of coffee.  It’s the iMac Coffee Sub casemod from designer Klaus Diebel, and it combines a coffee maker, a Mac Mini, and a JBL wireless sound system (complete with subwoofer) in one recycled iMac case.  Each one is hand made and completely designed to your specifications, which makes the price worth it.  Just head on over to the official website and start working on your personalized iMac CS!

I’d much rather have a mini Windows (or even Linux) machine inside the iMac case to save a lot of money off the initial cost, but the old iMac case is perfect for this kind of design.  It’s plenty spacious, yet it has a sleek design and keeps all the pieces together with no mess.  I wonder if I could order the iMac CS, hold the Mini?  It’d be a whole lot cheaper that way, that’s for sure!

While the Amazon review page is home to a lot of goofy comments from people claiming to be pathologists using it to catch up on work during the commute or people using it as a portable bar, there’s no denying that the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk is actually a useful product for people who A) have to work out of their car a lot, B) people who have to eat out of their car a lot, and C) people who drive around with their laptops open, looking for a place to steal wireless internet.  This is definitely a useful product, despite the fun people are having with it.

If I was, say, a real estate agent like our very own Kathy T., I’d want one of these in my car for catching up.  Some days, I’d love to just park somewhere, pop open my notebook, and get some writing done without having to go inside and chain myself to the desk in the basement.  This would be a great way to be able to do that.  A lot of times I find myself grabbing food on the way to/from places and trying to eat while riving.  It’d probably be a lot safer if I just ate off one of those trays, and I’d get a lot less food on myself that way, too.

But enough about my bad habits and love of stolen wifi.

As a devotee of a good cup of coffee every morning (and afternoon, and usually early evening), I’ve often found myself with a critical lack of hand space.  Sometimes I can work around it.  Other times, like when I’m driving to work and trying to back up out of the driveway, I knock the cup over and spill coffee all over the inside of my car, myself, or both.  Granted, the coffee smell is nice, but I’d rather, you know… drink the coffee.

That’s where Tugo comes in.  It’s a cupholder for travelers that attaches to the handle of a suitcase for traveling purposes.  If you can hang it on a suitcase, I imagine there’s some way to design a portable cupholder that hangs from the window or the dashboard of a car, too.  For example, my center-mounted car ashtray would be perfect for a cupholder.  I just have to figure out a way to make that happen.

For those of you who need a prepaid cell phone, starting Sunday you’ll have another choice.  Best of all, it’s from a company you already know that has locations pretty much everywhere in the US.  That company would be Walmart, via a partnership with Tracfone.

Yes, Walmart is entering the phone service world with their Straight Talk service.  No contracts, no hidden fees.  For $30 a month, you can have up to 1000 minutes of talk time and 1000 texts, or for $45 a month, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts.  When you run out of texts and time, or your 30 days are you, you just buy a new card and continue on using your phone.

There’s not a wide variety of cell phones available, just the LG200, the MOTORAZR, and the MOTO W385, but given that the top end phone is only $100 (and the bottom end $30), you can’t expect a whole lot of selection.  Plus the program is just beginning; if it takes off, I imagine they’ll add any number of phones to the lineup.

Throughout most of this week, I’ve spent a lot of my time talking to friends about what has to be one of the weirdest thing I’ve ever talked to anyone about:  pens and paper.  Specifically, the pen-retaining qualities of Moleskine notebooks.  I always kind of thought I was weird for having a favorite pen, but apparently all the other English major/writer types I know are also equally picky about pens and paper!

Now personally, I’m a Uniball fan, but I’ve heard great words about the Zebra Saransa and the Sharpie pen.  There’s just something about the ink flow from the Uniball that I really like, but I’m always open to trying a new pen experience.  All this reminds me that it’s time to go out and pick up some new pens, and maybe finally splurge on a nice new notebook for writing notes to myself about future blog posts and the like.

So tell me, do you have a preference for a particular pen type, or are you an any stick in a storm sort?  If you like pencils, that’s okay too; personally, I can’t stand writing in pencil, but it has its uses.