Frugal Friday: Simple ways to reduce your heating bill
For those of you who have some source of heat besides a wood-burning stove or fireplace, I thought it would be fun to share ideas for lowering heating costs during the next few cold months. Here are a few of my no-brainer ideas:
Instead of turning up the heat...
-Put on a warm sweater or sweatshirt.
-Put on socks and shoes or socks and slippers.
-Brew a cup of hot tea.
-Spend some time in the kitchen: Bake some homemade bread and a make a pot of soup for dinner.
-Get moving: Vacuum the whole house, mop the kitchen floor, clean the bathrooms - find something that needs to be cleaned and do it at a fast pace. Or, try turning on a workout DVD and getting some exercise.
Those are just a few ideas to get your creativity sparked. I'd love to have you add to my list in the comments below or in your own Frugal Friday post! Let's all help each other lower our heating bills and conserve energy this Winter.
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posted by Crystal Paine at 7:31 AM
26 Comments:
Hi Crystal, we heat 100% with wood, 3300 sq feet, about 6 months out of the year (already started and will do so till end of march...)
We never use the furnance... we cut our own wood or barter for it. Its a lot of work! lOTS, plus during the day you have lots of work to keep it going and bring the wood in...
But I figure it saves us over $2,000 a year! its worth it...
How about being 8 months pregnant? That seems to be working for me right now. ;)
HI Crystal,
We are blessed with a wood burning stove and a place to get cheap wood - I am so thankful!
I'm not sure of any other tips besides the ones you shared....
We have been know to read books snuggled up in bed for our homeschool - if it is really cold.
I also like to heat with the oven. Get cooking early in the morning so the kitchen warms up and smells good too.
A friend of mine always puts heavy blankets over her windows in the winter. I haven't tried this.
Have a great day,
Stacy
Good topic, Crystal. Now that we're living in large house, rather than a small condo, we're facing huge heat bills, so cutting them down would be amazing for us!
One thing I was thinking as I read your post was how do you keep kids warm when it is colder?
With my three year old, there's no issue really. She runs around so much, as long as she's dressed decently, she's always warm!
For my baby, I make sure to always use undershirts in the winter, and especially at night under his sleepers. We use two warm blankets over him, and fortunately he's a baby that doesn't move around much. I know some moms at church use baby bags, which are like a blanket that zips over your child so they can't push them off during the night.
Anyone else have ideas for keeping the little ones warm?
Stephanie
Weatherstripping around the outer doors can really help.
Last winter we were renting a small very drafty house and I had a 6 month old who wouldn't stay under covers at night!
What we did is buy 2 electric ceramic heaters. They were around $60 but it has enabled me to turn the heat way down and just have some warm air blowing in the room we're actually using.
The ones we bought have a temp. control which is awesome and several safety features (like if they get knocked over they turn off)
Don't know if it is just a mental thing or if it really helps, but I have found that lighting a centerpiece of several pretty candles makes me feel warmer in my kitchen (on the colder end of the house).
Then, since I work there much of the day, I am not tempted to crank up the heat...besides it looks nice!
Pure wool or at least wool blend sweaters are much warmer than synthetics. A soft cotton turtleneck under a wool sweater will keep the chill away nicely.
I think cooking and housework are two excellent ways to warm up. Another kind of odd one is to stop the dishwasher just as it starts the dry cycle. Open it a bit and you'll get some lovely steamy heat! Wearing shoes and socks also helps me out.
To keep my son (16 mo.) warm at night, we dress him in a snap t-shirt and socks, then put a footed fleece blanket sleeper over it. You can find blanket sleepers on sale and at thrift shops, unlike those expensive sleep sacks. If it's really cold, just put on more clothing underneath. Then there's no worry about blankets and SIDS. Actually, we're not worried about SIDS anymore, but my son won't stay put under his blankets, so I've stopped trying.
We are trying to keep the heat down to less than 64 degrees all the time now. Luckily, we have done some energy efficent things over the years to help make our house warmer. We did new windows 18 months ago and did sliding almost 4 years ago-both of those things have helped. With oil going through the roof, I really don't want to be spending $300-$400 a month on oil. Luckily we do have a credit with our oil company and we do a budget plan with them so are ok now! I just don't want to get hit with a huge shortage/adjustment next year.
Hello Crystal...I can not believe how expensive it is to heat our homes...I am thankful for our pellet stove...It has saved us lots of money...we buy pellets in the summertime when they are cheaper and store them up...
weatherstripping and making sure your insolation in your home is done right really makes a difference too.
I did a frugal friday post abaout this a while back...to see that post, follow this link. http://simplystork.blogspot.com/2007/10/frugal-friday_10.html
thank you,
~simply stork~
Great tips Crystal!
Keep the humidity up in the home will help keep you warm. Growing up we used to place breadpans filled with water near the heat vents to keep the humidity up...and I still do that once in a while here if the humidity gets low. Ann'Re
how fortutious... here in montana that's what our entry's about too :)
keep warm
gp in montana
http://horsewoman.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/winterizing-simply/
We live in a cold climate so I'm familiar with this issue. I wear tight undershirts under my long sleeved shirts and sweaters and that helps a lot. I wear tights under my pants sometimes. Flannel sheets on the bed. We have doors to our family room/kitchen area so at night we shut ourselves inside and shut off the vents to all of the rooms that we don't regularly use. See if your gas company has a plan where they average out your gas bill across 12 months and you pay the same amount all year around. So no surprise bills. They base it on previous years usage. If you can save money to pump insulation in your house and buy storm windows, do it! The previous owners did both and we have substantially lower heat bills than our neighbors!
Janelle
Another "no-brainer" that is sometimes easy to forget is to make sure you turn down the heat when you leave the house! It also helps when I can convince my twelve-pound cat to curl up on my lap for a while. :)
We heat almost exclusively with wood - in fact, we only got a furnace put in last year; we rarely use it.
I second wearing slippers - it's amazing how much warmer you feel if your feet are nice and toasty. Also, though the fires don't get the whole house warm, it's very pleasant to read or study sitting by the fire.
We have a programmable thermostat in our large house, which is set to 67 degrees for the first 2 or 3 hours of the day and the last 3 hours of the evening. During the daytime it is set at 65 and overnight at 58. The upstairs bedrooms are heated with radiant heating panels in the ceilings so we leave those thermostats on 10 degrees Celcius during the winter and close the doors during the day so the cold air stays put. We have caulked the windows, checked the weatherstripping, cleaned the furnace, etc. We use the layering of clothes, blankets on the sofas and chairs, baking ideas as well to keep warm. Our gas bill came yesterday and it was $112 for one month! We really need to find some more ways to cut down! I am thinking that if we had some doors on the main floor that could be closed to keep the cool air in the rooms that we aren't using as much that might help too?!
Ann
Being pregnant was my answer too!
We keep the thermostat at 65, and supplement with our small woodstove, it has worked very well so far.
I invested in custom lined drapes in my living room & dining room. It has really made a difference in out heating bill.
PS: I bought them when they were 40% off with an additional 20% off by using the store charge card!
I think one of my strategies might be to read all the articles about how to keep warm this season. That way I can be thankful it really IS warm where I live and not be so grumpy about the heat and trying to keep COOL! :-)
Jodi (in Australia)
Any ideas for what to do with a newborn during cold weather? We do the sleep sack/layering thing, but this will be our first winter baby (due in Jan) and I read not to keep it too cool with a newborn. We usually have the heat around 65-67 during the day and 60 at night (without newborns).
Cathy
I have a 2-month-old with congenital heart disease. Her circulation is poor and we're not supposed to let her get too cold since it would make her heart work extra. I'm worried that this winter's heating bills will be sky-high, since we usually turn our heat down to around 62* at night, but I've found that her little cheeks and nose are ice cold when I do this and so I've stopped turning it down so much at night. She wears hats on her head and socks on her hands 24/7, is always in layers (l/s onesies underneath at least 1 layer of clothing) and we keep her swaddled pretty mcuh 24/7, too. Any other ideas or recommendations for keeping infants warm (especially the parts you can't cover!) are very welcomed!
My biggest one is to purchase a programmable thermostat and use it. We have the heat come on in the morning for showers and getting dressed then it drops down to 64 degrees in here during the day (if you get cold put on a sweater and socks is what I tell my kids who insist on not wearing shoes even in the cold!) Then later in the afternoon the heat turns on for the evening and the kids baths at then down to 62 for sleeping (you actually sleep better when it is cooler!) I am one of those people who is always warm provided my feet are warm so I have been knitting WOOL socks for myself to wear that makes me comfortable and then I do not get cold just because my feet are cold!
We had a wood burner in our old house (which we removed before we moved out and is sitting in our garage right now as this new house is too small for it and there is no room for it! We have about 900 sq ft here so not much room for the wood burner.) and had the gas company calling to ask why our bills had gone down so much in one month, had to explain the situation to them. Also in this house we invested in lots of insulation for the attic and new windows (dh installed them and the new siding with lots of insulation under it) now we need to get new doors and the house will be even toastier! We also use a humidifier during the winter (just be sure to clean it out thoroughly once a month) and that helps to make it feel warmer too!
We do not have a programable thermostat....I work from home so I am the programer....we also don't have small children at home. When I get up in the morning I turn it up to 65 degrees for roughly one hour....just to get the chill off and then it goes back to 63 the rest of the day. My husband like it cool so I just put on socks and a sweater and when I am watching tv or sitting with my lap top I throw a quilt over my legs....it is such a feeling of satisfaction to keep the heating bills low.
Interesting!
For keeping babies warm at night, I love those snug fitting thermal bodysuit type sleepers that snap up the front. They fit close to the body and are easily layered under a roomier sleeper.I use a larger twin size blanket (usually two) in the crib and lay it across baby lengthwise so there is plenty of edge to tuck firmly under both sides of the crib mattress and then you don't have to worry about them kicking off blankets or getting tangled up in them and suffocating. For older children I just have them dress in layers and often with two pairs of socks on. Our house is in nice condition but old, so it's hard to keep the bedrooms warm. We have a small space heater in each child's room and turn it on when we tuck them in for bed. By the time we come upstairs an hour or so later, their rooms are toasty warm and we can just flip the heater off before going to bed ourselves. We don't like leaving them on through the night but find that just using them that short amount of time is plenty and with a mostly shut door the heat is held inside until morning.
During the day we open the blinds wide on our south facing windows to get as much free solar heat as possible. We all dress in layers and usually wear slippers or else a pair of clean shoes indoors to keep our feet warm. I find that the children stay more than warm enough with two layers and staying active during the day.
Crystal,
I had an energy auditor come to my home. He gave me the following tips: wash clothes in cold water(they come out just as clean), put gasket covers on all electrical outlets, and use the new fluorescent light bulbs. Hope this helps.
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