“What? I’m not going without overhead lights for the rest of the week, you crazy hippy!”

Admittedly, Seattle is dark this time of year, but really?  Is Greg truly more attached to overhead lighting than he is to video games and 30 Rock?

I too have always considered overhead lighting mandatory. It’s just a reflex. As the sun goes down, lights go on. And in Seattle, where the sun doesn’t even come out much this time of year, the lights tend to be on all day, and usually up until bedtime. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. We need light to do the majority of things we do, and it’s not reasonable to suggest that people should sit in darkness from sun down till sun up. But do we really need as much light as we use? And does it have to come from a light bulb?

Greg and I have already switched over to green power with our utility company, unplug chargers that aren’t being used and plug our electronics into powerstrips that we shut off before we leave the house, but the energy inventory that No Impact Week had us do today had me once again questioning my consumer justifications. When deciding whether or not to eliminate or mitigate energy use for certain energy hogs around the house, I really had to look at my reasons for turning certain things on. And I found that, particularly in the case of lighting, not only do I rarely have a good reason, but I often don’t have a reason at all. I keep one lamp in the bedroom on because I like that the light bounces off the mirror behind it in such a way that is reminiscent of candlelight. But getting that effect with a electricity means energy wasted as it travels along power lines to my house, and far more lumens than I need to create that elegant flicker when I could just light a candle.

So today, and for the rest of the week, in addition to turning off all the heaters and bundling up, we’re leaving the overhead lights and most lamps off, and instead bathing our home in candlelight from beeswax candles. It’s actually quite beautiful and rather relaxing. We’re not banning electric light completely. I’ll use my bedside lamp to read tonight and Greg will turn on the overhead light in the kitchen while he prepares dinner. But we will be questioning our reasons for using that energy and only giving in when we truly need to.

My guess is that, like shopping, takeout and paper towels, all of which we’ve given up this week, we won’t miss artificial light in a couple of days.

And I have total faith that Greg can handle the change. He’s already given up video games and sitcoms. This should be easy. As I explained to him, I’m pretty sure it will be good for us. Afterall, everyone looks better by candlelight.