Light Bulbs - Change the World Wednesday

This one has nothing to do with gardening, but my site is colored green and these challenges are about going green. How's that for a tie in?

This week's challenge is to only change out our light bulbs for LED or CFL.

We already use CFL's through out most of our house, but not in all areas. Call me cheap or decor conscious if you will. For the longest time CFL's were only the swirly kind and did not look good in hanging pendants or ceiling fans. However, the round globe (good for pendants) kind have been out for awhile and I have recently come across candle shaped bulbs - perfect for ceiling fans and dining room chandeliers.

Areas we are not using CFL or LED bulbs (and reasons):

• I believe they make 3-way and/or dimmable CFL or LED bulbs, but I've been too cheap to buy them. They are more expensive than your everyday use bulbs. It's funny how I now consider $2 (minimum) per bulb normal.
• When we built the house, it came with incandescent bulbs everywhere. Believe it or not, some of them haven't burned out yet.
• Three way switches (where you have two switches for the same light - weird two switches is termed a "three-way switch" in electrical speak) cause the light bulb to blink when it is off.
• Our bird needs a bulb for heat in the winter. We let the house temperature fall to 65 during the day in the winter and that is below the recommended temperature for birds. We turn on his light bulb so he can warm up if necessary. We don't use it in the summer because it's too expensive to cool the house that much.

I like CFL's because we were able to spend less on some of our light fixtures because they took a lower wattage bulb or required less bulbs. The CFL's allow you to get more light from your fixture because you can use a bulb with a higher equivalent wattage than an incandescent (i.e., you can put a CFL equal to 75 watts in a fixture that maxes out at 60 watts for incandescent).

I have to head to Lowes at lunch. I will look for the three-way bulb or the dimmables. I guess it's not that bad if you only buy a couple at a time.