I do love old houses, and am constantly amazed at architecture but wouldn’t it be exciting to live in a home of the future with space aged gadgets just for a while at least to see what it would be like? There is a fab programme on channel 4 at the moment called Home of the Future which is sponsored by e.on about a ‘real life’ family, the Pereras. Their lives, and home have been transformed by cutting edge technology that could well be how we are all living in the future. The programme is really interesting and very funny, plus the gadgets are breath taking!

I have to admit to becoming a bit of a gadget fiend for the last few years and have managed to pass this on to my children. Modern day life now seems to dictate that unless you live in a cave chances are you will be influenced by technological advances in your everyday life…but at what cost to the environment and our pockets does being ‘on trend’ have? It is highly likely that most of us have a mobile phone, perhaps an iPod, a tablet or a games console? These all use energy, which in turn costs us money to charge.

E.on Innovation have launched a creative collaborative between the UK public and E.On which with the help of five various challenges linked to The Home of the Future programme, invites the public to put their thinking caps on and come up with new ideas of ways to help the UK to save energy. Pollyanna Woodward, from the Gadget show, is encouraging us to get innovative. With an online community ideas can be thrashed out with the added bonus of incentives…not least the chance of a home energy makeover worth up to £10,000. Top ideas put forward are going to be developed with a view to them being transformed into reality in 2012.

Since I heard about the e.on innovation challenge I have been giving it some thought about where we as a family waste energy and how with a little gadget or tweak we could eliminate or at least reduce this wastage. For example, quite often I come home in the evening to discover that I have left my bathroom light on which means that not only has the light been on all day but the extractor fan too ( I know, I know…that’s terrible but the room is really dark and it’s hard to notice until it is too late) Perhaps if I had an alarm attached to the front door that alerts me to this, or an automatic ‘lights off’ option if we are out?

I think this is a really great idea and I am telling everyone I know about it, saving energy is high on a lot of people’s list of priorities nowadays and the website, with it’s badges and points that you can earn, is the interactive tool that I believe could just make that little bit of difference in the everyday family’s life.