Last month, we had an electrician come and expand the exterior lighting slightly. Back in September, my office moved locations and now I'm able to regularly bike to work. Since we don't have a shed or anything, the bikes are kept in the basement and I use the walkout to exit the house each day. Fifteen years ago, when Celeste was a baby, I used to leave the house through the same basement door in the middle of the night,* and while it was always dark, it wasn't that big of deal.
My goal is to be a bike commuter for as much of the year as possible. Figuring that as winter nights grew longer it might be helpful to have some light by the basement door when I was wrangling a bike and backpack and everything else, it seemed logical to add a light by the basement door. Evelin suggested that since we were having electrical work done anyway, we also add another exterior outlet in the same area.†
Per my preference for dark-sky friendly fixtures, we got a John Timberland Danbury Modern LED barn light. Instead of a normal lightswitch, we went with a Kasa HS200 Smart Switch, which makes it easy to program the light to turn on/off automatically when I'm leaving/coming home and, if it is off for some reason, I can turn it on with my phone. We have a few other wifi-enabled plugs (mostly Kasa and one WiOn) and they're much better than traditional mechanical timers and are also great for things like Christmas lights.
Up next? Still slow-going thoughts on expanding the house up or out, that old carpet in the basement, and who knows what else.
*When Evelin went back to work part-time after C was born, she went in to her office two afternoons a week. On those days, I shifted my work day to align with (then) IMAS's Italian office and left the house at 3-somethingalltooearly in the morning. Evelin was concerned that the front door was too noisy, so I started using the basement door.
†When we bought the house, it had one exterior outlet on the side of the patio that was primarily for the pond's pump. After the patio and pond were removed, I stupidly cut that wire off at the exterior wall and sealed off the wires inside; years later I realized it would work to have an (interior) outlet there instead of a sealed junction box. We added an exterior plug to the front of the house at some point and one on the deck as part of the huge kitchen project, but now there's one more set of outlets on the back of the house.
