This perhaps seems quite petty, but it is a real bone of contention in this house.
My husband is in his early seventies and is becoming more and more of a ‘grumpy old man’. He should have been born pre WW2, so that he could have been an Air Raid Warden. He’d have loved it as his favourite phrase is ‘Put out that light’! I realise that a lot of families have a father like this, but now that our children all have their own homes, it is me who collects the complaints.
I have a timer plug on a lamp in the front room so that if we are out, or at the back of the house, it comes on and looks from the outside as if someone is at home. It switches off later automatically. If my husband finds it on when he is at home, he often switches the lamp off, doesn’t tell me, and then of course, it cannot switch on automatically when we are out. It also means that I can’t switch it on with the app if I am returning home at night on my own, when I would like to put the light on to feel more secure coming into an empty house.
I have tried to explain all this to him, but he just keeps saying 'It shouldn’t be on when it isn’t needed.' I have explained that ‘need’ is not just an immediate thing, and it’s not just his ‘need’, but he refuses to discuss it further.
I try not to be wasteful, but it’s one light with a low energy bulb. It might be on, on its timer, when we are in the house, (ie 'unnecessarily') for about 4 hours, perhaps a bit longer in winter when it gets dark earlier. Am I really wasting a huge amount of electricity? Am I being unreasonable?
