Energy Reduction in Home Appliances: Lights Out

It’s very scary to watch myself live these days because of the privilege and material wealth that I am immersed within. While being ecological and environmentally friendly are important to me, there are still hundreds of things that I do that I should modify or change in order to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle.

As an artist and visual connoisseur, I approach everything in my life with an air of creativity and a desire to do great things in different ways than those that came before me. When I moved into my double in South College Dorm this August, I immediately tried to transform my room into a place where I feel comfortable, relaxed, and free. I put mountains of effort into decorating and designing my room. I hung old clocks on the wall, installed small shelves, set up small decorative displays, wrapped the walls with inspiring posters and pictures, hung banners and flags from the ceiling, and, above all, wired hundreds of Christmas lights in order to avoid the stressful brutality of the main overhead lamp. In fact, I have so many Christmas lights lining the walls of our room that my roommate and I have foregone use of the main overhead light all-together. Here is the issue though: the Christmas lights are so dim and soothing that we often leave them on indefinitely, I can only imagine the amount of energy I am using and wasting. I believe this is something that needs to be changed.

For my adopted sustainable behavior, I would like to limit the amount of time that Christmas lights and other extraneous devices are operating in my room. While this task seems easy and manageable, it brings about many challenges that need to be resolved in clever ways. For example, turning off the lights requires the introduction of another light source that is more ecological and sustainable than the Christmas lights. Normally, I would resort to using the main overhead light again but I am adamantly against using said light because of the stress and discomfort it induces. So, in due process, my challenge for the adoption of this behavior is to figure out a way to light my room that is both environmentally sustainable and conducive to a stress-free style of living.  I don’t want to limit my behavior to only Christmas lights however. I would also like to analyze operation time for other devices like my microwave, my fans, my television, and maybe even my speaker system. I have a funny feeling that the adoption of this sustainable behavior will catalyze numerous personal benefits and accelerate the progress of a more productive lifestyle.