Smart Bulbs Changed My Life

 

10/27/24 Observation and imagination

After sharing the house with the spouse guy for more than 35 years, surprisingly and with relief, I have adjusted well and relatively quickly to living alone. One of the few things that were harder to get used to, though, was returning to an empty house after dark.

The first time I experienced this was when I traveled to Dallas last April. Past the equinox, days were getting sufficiently longer, but my return flight had me coming home around 9 p.m. It was totally dark by then, and of course it hadn’t occurred to me when I had left home that I would be walking into a totally dark house after fumbling for keys on my totally dark porch. I didn’t like that at all.

Now that we are heading squarely into the Big Dark (I dread this Saturday when we turn the clocks back), I’ve been thinking about how to address the dark house issue. Years ago, we had an automated system that controlled many house lights, including a nice one that brought our “sunrise” light up slowly – a humane way to wake on dark mornings (and they were all dark, even in summer, at the hour we used to get up for all our working years). Over time, the mechanical system became antiquated and eventually stopped functioning. By that time, we had retired, it was no big deal to turn on lights manually, and I rarely returned home to an empty house.

I wanted an automated lighting system again, and I wanted it to be simple and straightforward – no talking to Alexa or some such. Conversations with friends and a little YouTube research led me to inexpensive smart plugs and smart bulbs – and they have instantly improved my life so easily! I use Govee, but there are lots of brands, and they all operate with a phone app.

The only difficulty was that I couldn’t reach my porch light. When my neighbor came to my door at my request, I started to go get my stepladder, but he was already reaching up to open the lamp. Life must be so easy when you’re over 6 feet tall! Now my porch light is smarter than I am, and I’m thrilled about it!

In addition, I put two interior lamps on smart plugs that were equally easy to program. One turns on in the livingroom before I usually wake, giving the house a warm, ambient light that begins to gently contract my pupils for the day (so much nicer than snapping on the harsh bathroom light first thing!). They are all on simple timers, but if I get cocky, I might use the preset program for the porch light that synchronizes with local sunset and sunrise times. (By the way, most of these smart bulbs can change to 16 million colors synching to music for dazzling dance party effects; I’ll stick to basic white, thanks.)

I’m sure tech savvy people have known about these products for years, but until walking through a dark doorway into a dark room brought the issue to my attention, I didn’t know I needed to get smart about it. Now I do, and I am.