The Light at the End of Your Move

Posted on July 30th, 2010 by Paulina Aguilera

Moving residences can set you back a ways in your finances. Take the opportunity of using your pending relocation to look into rigging your new house, apartment, or condo with money-saving light bulbs to make up for the expense of your moving costs.

After the moving company has finished their business transitioning you comfortably to your new place, walk around your home to find all the lighting fixtures present. (The average American home has about 45 light bulbs.) Take down old incandescent light bulbs and carefully collect them in a bag or bin. You’re going to replace them with environmentally sound compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs.

CFLs are a longer lasting, more energy efficient choice to light your new home with. If you’re not already in the practice of using CFLs, here are a few reasons why you should reconsider replacing your lights after you move in:

• Replacing one 75-watt incandescent light bulb with a CFL will save you $80 a year
• The average CFL lasts up to 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb – about 10 years!
• Save on energy consumption costs with a CFL that uses less than a third of the power as an incandescent bulb
• If each American household replaced just one incandescent light with a CFL, it would equal 800,000 cars off the road
• The average price of long-lasting CFLs are about $5 per bulb, making it an inexpensive way to save even more money

Another option for lighting your new dwelling, though a bit pricier, is to go with LED bulbs, or light emitting diodes. The cost of these bulbs is about $40, but they last even longer than CFLs – about 60,000 hours longer!

So what do you do with the old incandescent bulbs you’re replacing? Recycle them, of course! First you need to find out whether the city you’ve just moved to has a recycling program in place for the old, energy-wasting incandescent bulbs. Check here to see what the regulations in your state are and whether you can recycle your old bulbs. Once you find your answer, head over to Earth 911 to find a participating recycling center close to your new home to drop off your bulbs.

Now that you know how to efficiently light your new home while helping cut down greenhouse gas emissions, you can enjoy living in a greener, cleaner atmosphere within moments after setting up house from your relocation!

Related Articles:

1. Four New, Eco-Friendly Inventions that Will Revolutionize the Green Movement
2. How to Drastically Lower Your Electric Bill & Save Energy
3. Let There Be Light! Three Things You Need to Know That Will Lead to Better Interior Lighting

Tags: energy-efficient, light bulbs, relocating

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 10:36 am and is filed under Moving Experts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.