Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Wakeful baby nightlight

We used this scheme for many years. It worked for us.

When the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, I want to see where I'm going. The problem is that turning lights on wakes up my wife, really wakes up the baby, maybe the other kids as well, and wrecks my night vision for 10 minutes.

The solution was a desk lamp with a 5 watt red bulb. We used to use a lower wattage standard size bulb, but we can't find them any more. So I had to kludge up an interface to one of those little 5-watt bulb holders.

You need one of those outlet interfaces that screws into a standard bulb socket. Screw it into the bulb socket of the lamp. Then plug a night-light holder into one of the outlets. (If the 5-watt red night light is too bright for you, paint part of the bulb. It's only 5 watts, it won't get hot.)

The result is an easy-to-turn-on dim light that lets me see my way in the dark without waking everybody up.