Our CFL light bulb experiences

In 2006, I installed two curly CFL bulbs on our front porch, and both are still working, and I never turn off our front porch lights.

Yeah, I should have installed something so that the front porch lights would automatically go on and off, but I didn't, so the lights remain on, unless the power goes off, or someone else in our family turns them off. And those bulbs are exposed to the extremes of heat and cold and moths and midges.

But in our kitchen, those same bulbs only last three to six months. Everywhere else in the house, those bulbs have lasted for years.

Either that kitchen light has an issue, or it's because the kitchen light is turned on and off more often than any other light in the house.

Maybe those bulbs work better in lights that are rarely turned off. Maybe they don't hold up well to a lot of on-off activity.

I installed our first CFL bulbs in those front porch lights. For the rest of the house, when an incandescent bulb burned out, I replaced it with a CFL. So the table lamps and overhead lights received CFL bulbs between 2007 and 2009, and I don't think that I have replaced any of those CFL bulbs except for the kitchen.