I had the same problem in my house. I do arts and crafts sometimes, and I couldn't find a bulb even close to the right quality. None of them were as bright as a 150 watt+ incandescent and I had a hard time seeing details and color differences. I'm all for saving money, but these just didn't work.

We are using primarily incandescent now, but I stuck with CFLs in some places: lamps we rarely use (like a night-light type so we don't stumble into things late at night), some lights on timers (even though the box says not to), and in a few rooms we rarely use. The best place I've found for CFLs is in our porch lights. We have fixtures that are tough to get into, and really, who remembers to change the bulb out there? We stuck in CFLs a while back and haven't had any problems. Plus, no one cares if it takes a while to get fully bright.