There’s something about candlelight that makes the chaos feel a bit less annoying.
That’s the truth. I keep a couple old mason jars with half-burned candles stashed on the shelf, mostly for nostalgia’s sake, but I’ll admit, once you get wax on the floor or your tools, it’s a pain to ever get rid of it all. I had a pillar candle tip over during a storm a few years back and the wax ran down into a crack between my tool chest and the wall. Every time I move something over there, I find another chunk.
I get the appeal of those LED tap lights—super practical and you don’t have to worry about burning down your garage if you forget one in a corner. My only gripe is they chew through batteries if you’re not careful. I went through a whole pack during one especially long outage last fall. Ended up just grabbing my rechargeable headlamp and strapping it to an old paint can for hands-free light.
Honestly, it’s kind of funny how losing power halfway through a project brings out all these weird improvisations. Once I found myself finishing up sanding cabinet doors by candlelight because I was too stubborn to stop. Not my best work, but hey, it got done.
At this point, I've started keeping one of those big camping lanterns charged up. Not as charming as candles, not as easy to scatter around as tealights, but at least I can see what I'm doing without worrying about stepping in melted wax or running out of batteries halfway through.
Still, there’s just something about candlelight that makes even a blackout feel like less of a hassle... until you have to clean up after.
