Here’s how I know I’m getting older:
- I keep finding these frizzy, gray hairs. I’m only 32, y’all!! Is this normal??
- Also, I the other day I found myself daydreaming about horticulture, and longing to visit some flower museum to admire all the species of flowers, which for most of my life have been very boring!
- Finally, I constantly say, “Is there a draft in here? I’m freezing. Are you freezing?”
But seriously, y’all. It IS C.O.L.D. here. This is North Carolina. I didn’t sign up for 16 degree (F) wind chill!!
If you’re like me, when you get that heating bill in the mail, you cringe and wonder if they put the decimal in the wrong place. No one wants to spend $500 a month just to stay warm! Do they?? How to save money on heating and cooling costs is a constant question in the winter. Let’s go through some good options.
Keeping the thermostat low can definitely save you money. Some estimate that lowering it by 3-4 degrees can you save you about 10% a month. But once you’ve turned that thermostat down, how can you stay warm? Aside from relying on your heating installation, here are my tips to stay warm in a freezing cold house.
- Use the fire. Wood-burning is best, but if you have a gas fire (like we do) use it only at prime times for your family (coldest times of day, when you won’t be leaving for a while) Also, close off all the doors to other rooms, and lower the thermostat when you use it. Used effectively and in limited amounts, it can save money. BEWARE of those chimneys, though! You’ll never believe What came out of ours!
- Bundle up. Obvious, but if you want to set that thermostat lower, you have to. I recently read that you lose 98% of your body heat through your head. So wear that hat in the house! We also wear slippers constantly. My young boys like these from L.L. Bean. I have a pair of boot slippers. Also, there is nothing wrong with wearing a vest or jacket around for a little while!
- Get moving. Ready for the win-win? It’s exercise! Bundle up for a brisk walk outdoors, or do an indoor exercise video. Even jumping jacks count. I’m always amazed at how quickly I warm up by moving around.
- Get working! (Notice a theme?) My favorite “I’m freezing” chore is vacuuming my floors. It’ll really warm you up! Unfortunately, in the blazing inferno of summer you still have to vacuum. Oh well. Can’t win ’em all.
- Insulate places in your home where you’re using energy. I saw on TV that you can hire some energy expert to come tell you all the places you’re losing heat. You can do that, but I have cheaper way. Just hold your hand around the doors and windows on a cold day or use a lit candle to check for drafts, if you need some help getting new windows and insulating them too.
Hey, it’s not pretty, but it works. And don’t forget about curtains and blinds, which are a necessity for cold houses.
Determine where your home is warmer during times of the day, and hang out there. I realized we have a toasty warm playroom in the mornings, so we rearranged our daily schedule to be up there. Easy, peasy.
Use a programmable thermostat. (Or, watch the thing like a hawk.) I’m going to confess something. I actually do not use our programmable thermostat. I know that’s one of the “rules” of energy-saving homes, but I just didn’t like the one we had. I found it very difficult to change it, like when we were going out of town, or when I knew we could further lower/raise it to save energy. Since I am home during the day, it’s more effective for me to manually adjust based on how the house feels, and what I know the weather will do later on in the day.
Leave your oven open after you bake something. (Just not if you have little ones running around!)
What are your tips to save energy costs and stay warm?
I found that if I keep the heat turned down to 63 all winter and hit the button when I am cold then I only use it when I am cold instead of being too warm, now I am relatively comfortable with a sweater and slippers. The thermostat only stays up for 2 hours on override so two hours later. I can hit it again. 63 is perfect sleeping temp, so i don’t mind it all all when i am in bed.
I love slippers!
Yes, do NOT leave your oven door opened after using the oven if you have small children running around! My Mom always left the oven door open for the extra heat, so I was used to doing it too. 4 years ago, my then 18mo. son put his hands on the hot door. I was sure he was no where near the oven and turned my back for a minute. Little ones can run when they see something they aren’t supposed to have! He wasn’t burned badly, but I’ve never left the oven door open since to, hopefully, keep my other children from being burned.
Homemade rice bags heated up in the microwave. I’ve made them from pocket sized to hot water bottle size. I heat one up at bedtime, and pop it in at the bottom of my bed. Lovely!
Tape bubble wrap to the insides of your windows to insulate them.
Burning candles can help heat a room too, especially small ones like bathrooms.
Also, we love having blankets in the living room. They live on the couch and chairs. Whenever someone is sitting down, they can snuggle under one. Even better when they are homemade as they wrap you with love. 🙂
There is a really cool video on You Tube about heating a room using tea lights!
These days, I take strategic showers to stay warm. I love a warm shower before bed, so when I get in bed it’s nice and toasty.
I do the SAME THING! 🙂
Open the dishwasher after it has finished and the warmth will instantly warm the kitchen. We have a basement that is cooler than the main level – during the summer we put a box fan at the bottom of the basement steps, it pushes the cool air up. On average it raises the temp in the basement by 2 degrees and lowers the temp on the main level by 2 degrees. It is a win/win!
Good tip!!!
We rent an old farmhouse (built in 1887) that I love, but it does need insulation, new windows. The kitchen floor is always cold & the reason occurred to me back in our last cold spell…there was a leak under the floor that had to be fixed shortly after we moved in, which entailed tearing up the stone look tile that was down, pulling up the rooted original hardwood floor….big open space. We realized that it was probably the root cellar originally. So we have a very large open space under our kitchen floor!So when it get to be 1 outside…..it is COLD! I usually wear a couple of pairs of socks as I have terminally cold feet….I was wearing my Uggs in the kitchen.
Our new-to-us house is very inefficient and drafty. We’re doing some remodeling, and since it is freezing outside, just today I discovered that we have two “holes” in the ceiling, creating a nice flow of cold attic air. lol! One is a hole for a can light in the kitchen, but has no light installed yet. The other is an a/c vent opening that isn’t connected to anything since we’re moving some duct work around. And I was wondering why the kitchen was so cold!!! I promptly found some cardboard and masking tape and solved my cool breeze problem in a very redneck way. lol! Our walls and ceilings are currently unpainted sheetrock, so I don’t think a bit of tape distracts from my amazing decor. : )
I had to laugh about the squirrel. We have creatures in our attic…not sure what, but they may be squirrels. We’ve been hearing an awful lot of scratching and scurrying up above. Eek! And, yeah, those openings in my ceiling…I can just see a squirrel falling down. Eek again! Hubby says the creatures are in a different part of the attic, but I’m still glad I covered our drafty holes!!!
The image of squirrels falling through your ceiling made me laugh. Way to save some heat AND protect yourself from those vicious falling squirrels. 😉
I enjoy reading all the tips! I live in northwest Fl. And it has been cold here and with the humidity ..bone chilling! I also iron if I need a quick warm up. Our major bills are in the summer with the ac running.
Ironing is a sure fire way to warm up! Pun intended. 🙂
Ironing clothes always makes me hot. Hot cup of tea helps. Thanks for the tips!
Oh yeah – me too. So does hauling wood.
Where I am, the high today is 0 and the low is -15 degrees (F) – not including windchill, so this post is very appropriate! I have the following recommendations as well:
1) Change your furnace filter regularly to keep your furnace running efficiently.
2) Open your curtains during the day for solar gain and close them at night to keep the heat inside.
3) Plant non-deciduous on the north side of your house to protect your house from the cold wind. Plant deciduous trees on the other sides of your house to shade your house in the summer, but not block solar gain in the winter.
4) When you get a new furnace, look for energy efficient models.
Good tips – even if I have the black-thumb-of-death…outside plants are easier,right? 🙂
I love your idea about holding a candle to find the drafts!! I purchased a brand new townhouse six years ago and I have trouble keeping the heating consistent on all three floors plus the finished family room on the basement level. The heat is only two zones. My bedroom on the third floor is freezing! I supplement the heat up there with room heater, at the moment I cannot recall the brand but I highly recommend it. It is encased in oak and outside is cool to the touch. Best part is it hardly affects my electric bill at all and keeps the room very comfortable. I work full time so my heating costs are low – I keep the thermostat down very low when I am not home and also at night when I sleep. I am not at all adverse to throwing on a layer or two and have those fluffy soft throws around the house. However, I do feel my house is drafty and decided to hunt down the source recently. It was the door between the house and the garage. I taped it up with clear duct tape and call me crazy but I feel like its made a huge difference! Granted this is not ideal as I have been leaving my house by the front door and going into the garage from the outside. But funds are a bit tight right now and temps are hovering around zero so this quick inexpensive fix is helping for now. Living in MA with these bone chilling temps I do need to invest in some thermal curtains also.
Electric blanket!!!! 🙂
Fill a couple of socks with rice and use them at that door for the under the door drafts.
We live in IA so it gets COLD! We hung up curtains separating our second story and basement area from the rest of the house It remains warmer in the main part of our house without breezes from the basement and the heat escaping to the upstairs! The single best thing you can do though is make sure you have enough insulation! Better to over insulate than under!
We just re-insulated our attic last year – it helped a TON!
Hah – our fireplace looks just about like that! I thought we were the only ones! Our downstairs is so cold that my hubby put foam board blocking the entire fireplace AND several layers of blankets over the 12 foot sliding glass door. It looks attrocious (and good-bye natural light!) – but he thinks it helps.
When you’re cold, things like “looking good” don’t matter much. lol
Great tips! Thanks for sharing. Sometimes we just need to think outside the box from what we ‘normally’ do. Keep warm! We are heading from Ohio to FL and the temps there aren’t great either, but it’s warmer than it is here!
Have fun down south!
Use bubble wrap and plastic to cover single pane windows.
Gotta love bubble wrap – it’s SO useful!
I live in Arizona so staying warm is not usually the problem. Because we run our air conditioner in the summer we choose not to turn the heat on in the winter. The house stays at approximately 65 degrees to 69 degrees depending on the day. I did find however, that my sour dough starter would not start with my house being this cold. It was more like it was refrigerated. So I had to make it a warm bath that I change daily to help it along. You have great tips. I find that often it is just my feet that are cold (this is when I am already wearing two pairs of socks and slippers…I have very cold feet) so I plug in my heating pad while I am sitting at my desk working and put it on the floor and wrap my feet in heating pad love. So glad I don’t live in the extreme cold anymore so I feel for ya!
I use my oven a lot, so I keep my starter near it so it really helps keep it active. 🙂
I moved back to PA to take care of my aging Mother after living in FL for 30 years. I HATE cold weather…however, winter is a perfect time to all the baking I want. and I can always freeze the bake goods in Food Saver bags and have it for the summer when no one wants to turn on the oven. yes, that too uses gas, but its warmer in the house and serves a purpose…winter and summer.
I bake all year long – sometimes Barry wishes I wouldn’t. LOL
Stacy,most electric companies will come out and do an inspection for FREE. We had ours done years ago.
Yes they will!Good point!
Cook! A lot! Moving around the kitchen cooking keeps you warm, the kitchen heats up from cooking (not just leaving the door open), plus eating warm comforting food makes you warm. We have a pier and beam house and the dryer vent runs under the house, so using the dryer helps too. My oldest son has asthma and we had a propane furnace, I had no idea it was bad for asthma. We went to using electric heater in each room and not only did his asthma get better, but we started saving money!!! We only heat the rooms we are in!! And when we are gone, we turn them off altogether! Unless it’s freezing, then I’m most likely not going anywhere anyway! It’s COLD here too in Texas!! We’ve been enjoying 60 degree days, but today it will be in the low 30’s and tonight 22, that’s not the windchill either!!
It’s going to be a windchill of -20 here tomorrow!
I love the little tip on ‘leave the oven open AFTER you bake’. I even do it with young children, just gate off the kitchen! We try to turn on our oven for at least one meal a day in the winter to get the ‘free heat’ after we are done baking!
I have a wall oven. Good idea about the gate!