So, most of you know I’ve been on a kick lately to be more environmentally conscious.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not green.  But, I’m working to get there.  Which brings me to the compact flourescent bulb.

Instead of using 60 watts while the bulb is burning, we can instead use 11.  That should help the ol’ electric bill.  It’s simple everyone can do it and it should really help out the environment.  Let’s change them all!  But…wait…what do I do with the perfectly good albeit electricity eating incandescent bulbs I already have in my lamps.  Seems a bit misguided to throw all of them in a landfill to use less electricity.  It certainly doesn’t seem anymore “green”. 

Plus, those compact flourescent bulbs can be pretty pricey.  For example, when my house was remodeled, the builders placed can lighting throughout the house with dimming switch plates.  Makes for nice lighting and you don’t have to worry about changing fixtures as things go from brass to nickel to antique brass to chrome to antique nickel back to brass again.  However, just one equivalent compact flourescent bulb that can actually be dimmed costs $13.  Plus, what about the fancy candle shaped lights?  Those will run you over $5 apiece.  The estimated dollar cost of turning my entire house over is around $410.  I know, I know, I’ll get that money back in what I save on the electric bill.  But, that’s still a decent amount of coin all at once.

So, we have decided to let these un-miserly incandenscent bulbs burn themselves out and replace them with more miserly bulbs when they do.  Still filling the landfill although it’s spread out over time.  So is the cost of replacing all of those light bulbs.  We replaced some of the other light fixtures that use the more standard bulb that you can replace for a little under $4 per bulb.  But we replaced the first spot light yesterday.  It’s actually brighter than the other spotlights. 

So, for less wattage, you get more light and I get to feel a little better about myself.  Plus, I get to spread out the pain of changing out the bulbs and gradually bring down the electric bill.  That works.