Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Let there be light!

I recently had the good luck of meeting a nearby family moving out of their house, desperate to get rid of (rather than throw out) some less-than-stellar household items. I gleefully took most of it--chipped dishes, worn wooden furniture, lamps of questionable function. And it's the lamps I want to talk about today, because they symbolize an important concept for me: you can never tell what will be useful in the future!

That makes it sound like I'm a hoarder. I'm not, although to look at my eyeshadow collection you might not believe me. Anyway, these lamps. Decently attractive, although all three were in need of new lampshades due to the children that apparently rampaged through their previous home. Today I finally got around to testing them all, and discovered that the one I was most excited about didn't work. However, what did all three of them come with? Fancy energy-efficient light bulbs that the previous owner didn't take out. I'm not advocating trying to get free lamps in the hopes of finding light bulbs, but it was quite an easter egg.

I have now arranged the energy-efficient lightbulbs in the lights that I use most often, and am excited to see if I notice a difference in my energy usage (which I monitor online using the PG&E website).

Lesson learned: don't pass up things just because they don't seem immediately useful. I was pretty skeptical about any of the lamps working at all. Now I have two lamps, two lampshades to re-vamp, and a more energy-efficient home!

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