Sometimes it’s the little things that can make a big difference in how you feel about your home.  My husband and I recently made a couple of improvements to our home that make us (well at least me) smile every single day.   And the best part is the total investment was less than $100 and 2 hours!

When we built our home we had can lights installed in the front soffits so that they would light the front of the house at night.   Sort of like landscape lighting only from above.   Our home also has a beautiful courtyard entry.   It’s great for entertaining, but the downside is that none of our windows face the front street, so no one can see if we are home unless we remember to turn the porch lights on.

Well, after a year and a half, we found that one of two things happened — either we never turned the lights on or when we turned them on they would stay on for DAYS!   Not exactly very energy efficient.

Amazon.com, Honeywell and my very handy hubby to the rescue.   I ordered 2 of these Honeywell Programmable, Timer Light switches.   They are a little pricey, but we chose these over some cheaper options because they have a sunset/sunrise setting that adjusts for Daylight Savings Time automatically AND they don’t rely on a battery that can go dead.  Both of the lights we wanted to put on timers are on 3 way switches so that also made the switches more expensive.   Even so, the 2 switches were less than $100.

You can set different on/off times for different days and you can also create multiple programs so you can have one for say vacation and one for when you are home.  In the interest of full disclosure they are a little difficult to program, but after reading the directions through a couple of times I got it done in about 15 minutes.   Be sure you keep the instructions someplace where you can find them just in case you want to program them differently down the road.

So about 45 minutes install time for hubby and 15 minutes programming time for me.  Then all we had to do is wait for sunset to see how they worked.   Ta da!  The sun went down and the lights went on!  Success!   Now our lights come on every evening and go off around midnight.   You can also program them to go off at sunrise.  Or if you live someplace where it’s dark when your day starts you can also set them to come on at a particular time in the morning and go off when the sun if up.

Now I smile every time we come home after dark or I see the porch lights click on in the evening.   Such a little thing but it makes a such a difference in how welcoming our home appears after dark!