Day 3: Lightbulbs

We have an interesting phenomena going on in our history of moves, and I'm sure there are "pros and cons" to the idea.  We pack our lightbulbs to take with us.  (Seems like others do too.  Right Shara?)

When we were first married, there was a big movement to transition out of incandescent light heaters.... er light bulbs.  This was a period of kind of "green revolution" where recycling, fuel economy, and reducing utility bills were on everyone's lips.  (For a couple of years, we bought a portion of our electricity from a wind-farm in upstate New York.  That made me very happy). At one point, I recall being driven to reduce our power consumption by buying compact flourescent lamps (CFLs) for our light fixtures, which typically used about 75% less power.

The wave of the future.  Are you in?  from here.

We shopped the deals for them, and I recall getting them for 6 for $10 on a good deal at Lowes.  This spring I picked up a bunch of them for 39 cents apiece at Building 19.  That being said, I'm sure the Lowes ones are better quality, but we shall see.

This week we are doing the lightbulb shuffle such that every socket gets a bulb,  We have been running the fixtures lean, because we don't need 3-5 bulbs lighting a room at any given time  (as the ceiling fan lights accommodate).  The sockets at Bartlett Drive get incandescent bulbs, and the sockets at 57 Chestnut get CFLs.  I have the stash of old 60W and 75W lightbulbs down in the cellar that were in this house when we moved here, so it was just a matter of pulling them up from the basement to put them back in so we can take our new bulbs to the new house.

Here's what we noticed:

• Wow!  Incandescents make everything look yellow!
• I forgot how warm lightbulbs got.   They do a good job of pre-heating the bathroom (and keeping the mirror from fogging up after a shower).
• As above, perhaps we should use incandescents in the new house because electricity is cheaper to burn per BTU than oil.  You know, heat the house in the evenings with light bulbs then let the temperature drop a little while we're all sleeping.
• I forgot how incandescent bulbs dim when something load-ful turns on.  When Graham's space heater kicks on, all the bulbs in the house dim a bit.  Well... if we are burning 25x60 watts instead of 25*12.5 watts, that could explain it (though I'm not sure we ever really have 25 bulbs burning at once) 
• Once you get 3 bulbs lighting a room, it's very bright.   We've been lighting our living room with one 12.5 watt CFL for the last 6 years, so we have lots of "mood" lighting.  Our bedroom's ceiling fan accommodates 5 bulbs, and that really seems like overkill to me.   Who really needs 300 Watts worth of light in a room?  
• CFLs don't fit in porch lamps quite as well, so incandescent bulbs might still have their place.
• I recall having to change bulbs like once every year.  Now I think these bulbs only die every 5-7 years, so I'm really not changing very many light bulbs!

So maybe this is the right strategy:  Use incandescent bulbs in the winter to help heat the house with electricity (cheaper than oil), then put in your spring/summer/fall bulbs to keep the house from getting unnecessarily hot and to save electricity.  

Are there factors I'm forgetting?