I just finished making a big change in the way we light up around here. I got rid of the
compact fluorescent lightbulbs in most of the household fixtures.
I tried to be green about my lighting choices--I really did. I dealt with that $7-per-bulb price tag in the hopes of realizing energy savings down the road. We tried this for quite some time. But as it got darker earlier and earlier, we realized that we just didn't want to put up with lights that took 20 minutes to reach their full (yet still inadequate) brightness. If I didn't turn on the dining-room light when I started cooking dinner, the light wouldn't be bright enough to eat by. And we like to read in the family room. There wasn't enough light coming from those CFLs to be able to do that.
Call me old-fashioned; I've gone back to those good old incandescent bulbs. Put a hundred-watter into a lamp, and you could land a plane in the living room. Those CFLs are fine if you don't want to see the food you're eating, and if you don't ever plan to read after sunset.
We also discovered that CFLs don't work so well in fixtures that hang upside-down, like hallway lights. The "green" bulb in our upstairs hall light--the light that's on from dark 'til dawn every single night--only lasts about 2 months longer than a standard light bulb, yet costs a whole lot more.
I won't completely write off the CFLs, but I'm going to be a lot more careful where I use them. Let me know when they invent some energy-saving bulbs that are as bright as sunlight the instant you flip the switch, and I'll be happy to switch back.
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