Wonderful Daylight: How do you use your valuable time in the evenings?

Mezmerizing fall foliage, dipping temperatures and our upcoming Daylight Savings Time change all have an effect on our sunlight. We enjoy and thrive on the energy and light from the sun. On November 4th we will turn our clocks back one hour, resulting in darkness and sunlight each coming 1 hour earlier. Many people appreciate the earlier daylight to help them wake up easier. Our children will catch school buses in the daylight. Our evenings darken sooner, so there seem to be more hours to work on inside home chores or projects. We have longer evening time to enjoy those inside activities.

We will continue to lose daylight for the next 7-8 weeks as the sun moves south. On December 21st, the winter solstice, the sun will reach the Tropic of Capricorn, its southern boundary, and begin moving north. So this is a great time to plan those inside activities and parties. Use your home lighting to bring cheer and comfort when the sun goes down. Halloween will be here before the time changes, children will be trick-or-treating right around sundown. The ghosts and goblins will have the safety of some light, depending on when they visit their neighbors.

When those little tricksters arrive, homeowners are able to use their tilt and turn type of blinds to their advantage when they want to see what is happening outside. If we have wood or metal blinds, we’re able to leave them open to see the trick-or-treaters. If we have Silhouette® shadings we can hide from the trick-or-treaters by having our vanes in the open position when the blinds are covering the glass. (There is a previous blog post titled Cooler Temperatures Ahead:… explaining shading advantages.) If our lights are out in our homes, those little ghosts and goblins won’t see us watching them when they come to the door.

Spiders, bugs and debris often collect in our Silhouette® shadings. This would be the perfect time to leave spiders in the vanes until after Halloween has passed and before Daylight Savings Time has ended for this year. The first part of November would be a good opportunity to remove the bugs, spiders  and debris with our CamilyWand Sticky Bug Removal Tool™. It is a safer method than other methods in collecting the unwanted pests on it’s sticky tip and bringing them out of the tube type openings of the shades like Silhouettes®, Pirouettes®, Vignettes®, Luminettes®, Shangri-Las® and Illusions. It can grab webs, light weight items, dirt, paper and other things from high or inaccessible places, as well.

When daylight savings time ends, it will be better to do chores that need daylight as early as possible in the day. Though there is evidence that people trying to monitor and take advantage of sun times started with the Romans and was discussed by Ben Franklin, modern daylight savings time use is credited to New Zealands George Vernon Hudson in 1895. We began using it in World War I. It is typically used in the northern hemisphere, largely North America and Europe. There are a few places in South America, Africa, Australia and all of New Zealand that also use it.

There are many ideas and theories that people use to justify changing our clocks back and forth during the year, some practical,  and some economic. The farmers’ advantages are great, and one of the most logical explanations for shifting our clocks. I enjoy the combination of the earlier daylight and the longer days as the sun shines in the northern hemisphere longer during those times. At the same time, I do certain chores and hobbies (inside projects) in the lower light times, thinking of it as a nesting, resting and rejuvenating time. Give these ideas some thought as we move toward our cool weather holidays and winter time.