Don, that’s something that makes perfect sense. And especially in high-humidity rooms like bathrooms, I can really see that happening.

It makes me want to go throw the main breaker and check out my bathroom switches right now.

However, the light circuit has two ends, and I’ve seen problems arise at the other end that will burn out compact fluorescent lights. It particularly applies to older houses, and that is the light switch. Over years or decades of switching on and off, the contacts arc and corrode, the circuit current flow becomes irregular, and while old-fashioned hot-wire light-bulbs are forgiving of minor irregularities in current, the CFL’s aren’t.

Depending on how confident one is, one should either look at the light switch themselves, or have an electrician check out the whole circuit. This is fairly important – arcing mains current can burn a house down. One of the ones I found was dead scary. Heat had burnt and baked the plastic parts of the switch to brittleness, and why it hadn’t just collapsed I don’t know.