I tried. Really, I did. For several years now, I have put up with dim-and-getting-dimmer lighting in the family room and dining room. If I didn’t turn on the dining-room light when I started cooking dinner, we wouldn’t be able to see our food during the meal. And you couldn’t read in the family room.
So this week, I kicked them out: all those compact-fluorescent lights we’d installed in those fixtures. At $7 per bulb, it was going to take a while to realize the energy savings when we had to turn them on earlier than we needed them in order for them to get halfway bright enough to use. Now I’m supposed to find a special disposal site for them, because apparently they’re toxic waste, too.
Fortunately, I’ve been hoarding those good old incandescent bulbs (thank you, Thomas Edison!) I can switch on that dining-room light just as I switch off the kitchen stove, and it’s nice and bright in there. (You could land a plane on my dining-room table if you had to.) I’ll save the mood lighting for dates with TheDad at fancy restaurants. Although the dim lights were good for one thing: it was harder to see whatever Little Brother had spilled during the meal.
CFLs just do NOT work for me.
