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Most people picture lights and gadgets. In practice the largest share of home energy in a cold or hot climate is doing one thing: changing the temperature.
Keeping a home warm in winter or cool in summer is typically the biggest single use, ahead of water heating, and far ahead of everything plugged in.
Which saves more in a cold climate?
It is visible, easy and free. Insulation is invisible, effortful and costs money.
Advice tends to travel on ease, not on size.
Roof, walls, windows, floors, and gaps around doors and openings.
The cheapest of those to fix is usually the gaps.
Sealing gaps costs very little and works immediately, because moving air carries heat out faster than still air conducts through a wall.
Heat rises, and roof insulation is usually the best value of the larger jobs.
Windows are the most visible and often the least cost-effective per unit spent.
Which changes the bill more in a cold climate?
Tap an item, then a bucket
Heating water — showers, washing, dishes — is commonly the next largest use after climate control.
Which makes shower length matter more than most gadgets.
Anything that heats or cools: kettle, oven, tumble dryer, fridge, freezer.
Anything that only computes — phone, laptop, router — is small by comparison.
If it makes something hot or cold, it uses real energy. If it only thinks, it does not.
That single test sorts most of a house correctly.
Things that are on constantly can add up even at low power, simply because they never stop.
Small times always is not always small.
Temperature is the bill. Stop heat escaping before you worry about standby, do the cheap gaps first, and use the heats-or-cools test on everything else.