With London still reeling from its encounter with that cold, white stuff yesterday and much of the UK braced for frozen conditions, keeping warm has suddenly become big on our list of priorities again.

Follow the jump for some steps you can take that should lead to a drastic reduction in your usage of electricity, gas and other fuels while you keep toasty warm. Adopting just one or two of them will make a difference...

If you're hoping to save energy in the home this year, don't forget that fridges make heat and heat takes energy. There are some useful tips here on how to get the best from your fridge without letting it suck up too much juice from the grid, but Treehugger drew my attention today to a simple way of preventing cold air escaping from the fridge while it's open.

It's a special curtain you can make for your fridge by doctoring the sort more commonly used in showers. I imagine it would be great for keeping out curious pets, too!

Related: How to make your fridge a greener place | Friday fun: turn the bloody fridge off

Black & Decker have just brought out a tool called the 'leak detector' which helps you spot the points where draughts are entering your home. This could save you 20% of your energy costs, they say. Now, I'm pretty sure that my own body is capable of doing this job all too well on its own, but am willing to believe that the less thin-skinned may need the help of a gadget to find those trouble spots. Then, all you need do is buy a stack of tools to plug those gaps (or just rely on the time-honoured method of a tights sausage.

[Via DVICE]

With the first October snowfall in 70 years and the temperatures dropping rapidly, it's around this time of year that saving energy at home becomes the biggest challenge. Big Green Smile offer all kinds of gadgets and gizmos to help you heat your home as efficiently as possible, and in the name of driving down carbon emissions in homes everywhere, we've joined up with them to you the chance to win a bumper energy saving pack in time for winter.

Follow the jump for details on how to enter

It's concept design eco-lamp heaven. So long as the Krank lamp works a little better than the Gary's look at the wind-up torch, then it's a good bit of work from Mr Efrain E. Velez.

Of course, the danger is that you rip off the head of the lamp from irritated excess kranking every five minutes between reading three pages of your book before the light fades. However, the magnet and copper coil internal mechanism is promised to produce between 40-60 minutes of light with "just a few kranks".I can imagine the Krank being a total pain in the arse but I can also imagine coming round to the idea pretty quickly as the sea-levels approach my doormat.

[via Tech Digest]

I love draught excluders! No other domestic item is quite so good at being simultaneously cute, retro and functional in quite the same way. Of course, you could always get a plain strip of plastic or brush to stop air escaping from under your doors, but what would be the fun in that?

Follow the jump to find out where I found these guys

Related: Hippyshopper guide to surviving the credit crunch | Top five ways to keep warm this winter

In most corners of the media, money-saving has already eclipsed planet-saving, which has suddenly become yesterday's news, leading many to believe that the two concerns are worlds apart. But they couldn't be more wrong, because being green is all about resourcefulness, economy and frugality -- and not necessarily about buying expensive organic chicken. Follow the jump to find out some really useful ways of saving money and the environment at the same time.

It's taken us a while to get to this point, and we lost a couple of testers along the way. But finally, I can reveal just how much electricity Katie and I used at our respective homes over the past couple of weeks, how much we differed, and how we compare to the UK average...

But how much did we use? Read on over the jump

This video is, apparently, what happens when you let geeks loose on the pressing question of energy efficiency. Tech Digest's Gary Cutlack is clearly on the right track when it comes to the complex science of turning stuff off, but should he perhaps be focusing more on the C02 cost of his idiot toys rather than blaming everything on his poor old fridge? Proof if proof be needed that nutrition is a mere accessory to the truly dedicated gadget freak, I'd say...

Related: Friday Fun: 'The Front Fell Off' video | Ali G on the environment

Let this be a lesson to me. Never trust elderly neighbours. When I moved into my new flat a few weeks back, my neighbour was all sweetness and light. She let us into the electricity meter box, so that we could get a reading to tell our supplier. She also revealed that she's the only person in the entire universe with a key to the electricity box. No problem. I won't need to get in there again for a long time.

Or so I thought. The following week, I stroll into work to see a big pile of boxes on the Hippyshopper desk. "What are those?" I ask Abi. "Energy Monitors" she replies, "And we're all testing them". "Cool!" I thought.

Fast forward to that evening. I'm knocking on neighbour's door, wondering whether she'll think I'm some kind of weirdo, connecting machines up to the electricity. No answer. I try again, several times that week. No answer. She seems to have gone on holiday. So to cut an even longer story short, I didn't get to test out my energy monitor - the eco-eye Elite. Instead, I'll talk briefly about the product anyway, and the kind of energy usage I think I have as a big gadget geek.

As I've mentioned before, I have a love-hate relationship with gadgets: I love it when they're up and running and improving my life in new and exciting ways, but I have a phobia of manuals and want as little to do with their inner workings as possible. For this reason, I'd been assuming I was having a rare stroke of beginners' luck with the Wattson: it was all so easy and user-friendly that surely something had to go wrong sooner or later.

And I had convinced myself that this 'catastrophe' was going to occur at this phase of the experiment: the data collection. Read on to find out if my pessimism was well-founded.

So, still in the throws of moving house, I did my bit for the environment and installed my shiny new energy reading device (before I had unpacked my clothes, books or even a saucepan). It may have helped that I was watching Earth: The Climate Wars; last night's fascinating documentary on how science has viewed climate change in recent history. Or it could have simply been my innate, eco-warrior status, which may, of course, be about to be blown completely out of the water.

Follow the jump to find out how I got on and check out my twitter feed for real-time updates!

We like LED lighting around here, but it's even better when it comes stylishly packaged and has extra gadgety bits to get excited about, too.

The Spark Lamp is not only a cool, comtemporary low energy lamp, but it also comes with a wireless device that monitors the overall energy usage in your home. Oh, and it doesn't need any electricity for itself, thank you very much, as it stores up sunlight during the day to get its juice. Just like a plant! Which is why it kinda looks like one.

[Via Ecofriend]

Related: LEDs: the lights with a lighter footprint | LED technology now available in lightbulb form

LED lighting is a really exciting area of technology, as it has all the energy- saving benefits of CFL bulbs, but without the harmful mercury. And it's improving all the time: the cost of LED is going down as the light quality achievable keeps getting better.

This is the first concept I've seen, however, for an LED bulb that's compatible with the fittings we all have at home. This LED bulb by Frog Design looks much like an incandescent bulb. It also works like one, uses the same sockets and gives off the same warm colour. The only difference is energy savings and a life span of 30+ years! [Via Ecofriend]

Related: How to clear up a broken CFL lightbulb without pain and death

There are loads of products on the market to help you save electricity, but what about saving gas? It's in all our interests not to waste this natural resource, which is getting pricier by the minute.

This gas-saving net (which actually looks quite pretty in action!) sits on top of your gas hob and ensures it burns as efficiently as possible by capturing any unburnt gas that would otherwise leak from the stove and be wasted.

The net is a great value buy in itself at just £9.97 at Nigel's Eco Store.

Related: Energy and money-saving tips from Friends of the Earth | Demystify your bills and save energy with Ewgeco