The kitchen and bathroom at my house now have a very useful feature: when someone walks into the room, a small light senses the movement and switches on automatically for two minutes - longer if the movement continues. That's heaps of time to wash your hands, pick up a forgotten item, get a glass of water, or drop off a plate. These lights plug into a power outlet, and will come on only when it's dark and a movement is detected. The convenience is wonderful, of course - but what's better is that we need to turn on the larger overhead lights much less often, saving energy. And those smaller lights switch themselves off, too - no need to remember to do this manually! If you want to look at getting some, try your local hardware store. Amazon also have them (search "motion night light").
Since one of my resolutions is to switch all of my battery-operated appliances over to rechargeables as their alkaline batteries wear out, I bought my first batch of eneloop batteries today. Aside from the positive reviews these batteries are getting, my main reason for starting a collection was because I would love to take advantage of the solar charger that has been released in Japan. Solar powering instead of mains power, and much less battery waste, makes for much more environmentally-friendly small appliance usage.
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