Check out the Resource Monitor and look at the memory tab. You'll be able to see how your memory is being used. You're likely to see that a lot of that memory is in Standby.
You can try using
RAMMap to get a more detailed breakdown of how the memory is being used.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx
Otherwise, look at what is using how much memory. I've noticed that Chrome seems to use a good 100 MB+ per tab that I have open. I have a lot of memory so this isn't an issue for me and I don't use IE or Firefox so I don't know whether the same symptoms are present there.
There might also be stuff just running that you don't realize. As an example, if you use Quickbooks, there's a crap load of processes that just run in the background that should close with the main program but don't (like Updaters).
"The "Modified" region, logically enough, holds data that has been modified. This can include data that needs to be written to disk. It can also include private mappings that have been modified that don't need to be written to disk.
"The "Standby" region contains information that may be used later but can also just be thrown away. It is thus standing by to be used immediately for a more important purpose should one come along. It may include pages that have been pre-zeroed so they can be used without having to fill them with zeroes. It can include pages that hold contents of files on disk that could be used to avoid having to read the files again."
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