Disclaimer : This is a sponsored post brought to you by ACE Hardware. All opinions are 100% my own.
Have you ever read the title to a blog post and thought “Yeah, there is no way I am gonna buy this.”? And then you kept reading and by the end of the post, you were hunting for your debit card?
No? Well, your day has come my friends. We are gonna be talking today about the very glamorous and interesting topic of lightbulbs.
Yes. I know.
Hopefully by the end of this little chat, you will see what I now see….the light at the end of the tunnel per se. (That ridiculous joke was brought to you curtesy of my sleep deprived brain).
So long story short, Ace Hardware came to us and wanted to work together on a post about light bulbs….more specifically LED light bulbs. I was all like “um, could a subject be less interesting?” and then Jeremy forced me to get on a conference call with Lou Manfredini (that’s a legit name right there) who is their Home Expert. By the end of the call, I was a believer. I learned that those bulbs that looked like ice cream cones are not LED light bulbs and that basically I am throwing money into the wind with my current light bulb situation. If you are still buying regular incandescent bulbs, you are doing the same thing. Now I am back and am ready to present to you, my friends, why you should definitely consider this new technology.
REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD SWITCH TO LED LIGHT BULBS
LEDs LAST LONGER
Regular bulbs have an average rated life of 1000 hours. LEDS have an average rated life of 25,000 hours. (!!!!)
That means you have to change the regular bulb in a normal room at least 25 times before you would have to change an LED light bulb. Lou put it this way….imagine you changed the light bulb in your newborn’s nursery to an LED bulb….you use that bulb a normal amount…..the same bulb would be there when your baby graduates COLLEGE…even if they squeeze four years into five
And because these bulbs last longer, they save you money for replacements. A regular incandescent bulb costs about $1. An LED bulb is $8 or less. You spend a little extra up front but it saves you SO much more in the long run.
NO MORE LADDERS
Let’s face it….ladders are not the safest thing in the world. Jeremy and I are both afraid of heights and if you factor in the statistics on ladder-related-injuries, that fear doesn’t diminish. For our house, we have high ceilings and changing to longer-lasting light bulbs means less changing the lights means less ladders. It’s not rocket science. It’s less time, less work, less worry.
REDUCE THE CHANCE OF INJURY
Real life story. This past week, I was in the laundry room trying to remove the existing light bulb while standing on our kitchen stool. The stool tipped. I fell and landed not so gracefully onto the stool, a laundry basket and the floor. Now I have a giant bruise on my tailbone and one broken stool that is no longer sold by Crate & Barrel. I tried to get a picture of the bruise but my crack kept on getting in the photo and frankly….you’ll thank me later for not showing you. The point is….falls happen. And if you can reduce the chance of them, injury to yourself or breaking your beloved-no-longer-sold-online-or-in-stores-items, you would right?! And let’s face it….broken things (body parts or home goods) cost money. I don’t like getting hurt….but it only adds insult to injury when you have to pay for x-rays, doctor’s appointments and new stools.
REDUCE THE WASTE OF ENERGY
Normal lightbulbs are a huge waste of energy. The US Department of Energy put out this great article about comparing energy costs. READ IT HERE.
Basically, a normal lightbulb uses a lot of energy to produce HEAT and all of that is wasted! We want the light! But with an LED bulb, the heat is minimal (to the point of me holding my hand on a LED light bulb and it not burning) and all that money that is saved! That’s right….for the same amount of light produced, an incandescent light bulb uses 60W of energy whereas the LED uses 9.5 watts….which translates into $552 energy savings (84%) over 25,000 hours! FROM ONE BULB.
Did you hear that?
BUY TWO, GET ONE FREE
I get that there are huge savings over the course of YEARS and most of us aren’t very patient people to wait to see all that money stay in our bank account. I also get that there is a big sticker shock when you walk into a store and see a regular bulb priced at $1 and an LED bulb at $7.50. We are trained to go for that cheaper bulb. But I am attempting to re-train the brain and ACE Hardware is trying their best to help out. This weekend, they have a promotion going on for Buy Two, Get One Free! of equal or lesser value on all their Feit LED bulbs. There is no limit on the number of bulbs you can purchase and they are only while supplies last in stores. Hopefully that can help when it comes to this big cost upfront and make that leap a little easier.
The folks at ACE asked us to switch out the five most used rooms in our house when it came to lighting. We have TONS of light bulbs in our house. I guess with bigger rooms, taller ceilings, and lots of lighting needs comes more light bulbs and we totally took on the five-room challenge. We decided to change out the back hallway (five bulbs), the exterior bulbs (10+ bulbs), the living room (20+ bulbs), the master bathroom (9 bulbs) and the big boys room (5 bulbs).
The outdoor lights are super simple. It also gave me a chance to clean those lanterns. And we switched out the bulbs at our street too. We always said that it would be great to put them on a timer for evening lighting but it was really cost prohibitive before. Now I don’t feel bad at all about flipping that switch!
Oh and you might be wondering what I did about the dark parts for the front porch bulbs….I just used a paint pen to make the bottoms dark. Easy peasy!
Next was the hallway light….the new one we just installed….well, this one is really important to keep on in the evening because it leads to our playroom. The boys are CONSTANTLY running this hall….back and forth and it’s what wears them out at night. We can keep the light on so that they can find (and put away their toys) and I still can do my “put-aways” (aka…put away the laundry, the shoes, the jackets, etc.)
The room I was most excited about was the living room. We were literally down to five bulbs on our chandelier. That is how much we hate changing the lights. We literally would live in darkness so that we don’t have to climb a ladder. But we switched those to warm chandelier bulbs and now the room is SO much brighter and more happy.
The boys room was next and honestly the thing that stood out to me the most was the look of the new bulbs. The new ones don’t have that ugly printing on the bottom. I like that clean look. And Jeremy said that he thought they were much better lighting wise. He liked the warm white color and said that it made him feel like he could see better.
The last room we tackled was our master bathroom. We have two vanity switches…one on Jeremy’s side and one on mine….and when they are both on, nine bulbs are turned on. NINE! That’s a ton of light. And we sometimes forget to turn them off. It’s a terrible habit and we are trying hard to break it….but until we do, it’s good to know that it won’t cost us an arm and a leg.
So are you convinced? Are you gonna give the LEDs a try? Are you ready to take the plunge with me? Maybe all that money we save, we could go on a cruise together! That would be fun! A little light at the end of our lighting tunnel 
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