I am replacing the lights around my house with CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs) and you should too.  Random?  Read on… 

I was looking around my house and I realized several things.  The first, though not related to this article is that the dishes really pile up with four guys living in a house.  The second thing I noticed was that my house is in sore need of updating and maintenance.  The college look has long since passed “cool” down to “well Ill rearrange as soon as I have some money” and then proceded on to “Seriously, have a little self respect.” 

On a completely seperate day I was doing the household bills and I was pondering how on earth four guys can rack up a utility bill topping $200.00.  Thats just for water and electricty mind you, not even including the gas bill. 

These two seperate thoughts came together in one brilliant, bright idea (har har).  I would start a series on saving money with home improvement.  The first thing on the list?  Light bulbs.  As it turns out changing out regular light bulbs in your home with CFLs can actually save you a fair chunk of money over the long run.  First lets have a look at the differences:

Well, there you go, thats visual difference.  You can pretty much get a CFL that puts out any sort of light, though I wont go into details here because I know you are all sitting in your office chairs screaming “Show me the money!” at your monitor.

Lets take my favorite kind of “regular” incandescent light bulb, namely the 100 watt light bulb.  Why do I like the 100 vs say a 60?  Quite frankly I hate dim light while Im awake.  To make the switch to a similarly bright CFL I would need to buy the 25 watt variety.  Lets assume I replace 100W incandescent bulbs with 25W CFL bulbs and that each bulb is in use for 4 hours per day on average:

(Taken from here)

In my house I counted up a total of 12 bulbs that could be changed out.  Im going to do the switch this weekend and then Ill post my energy bill next month versus the one this month.

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