It’s finally starting to cool off and feel like fall here! Aside from being soup and sweater season, another lovely thing about fall is that utility costs are lower because you don’t have to pay to to cool or heat your house. Stretching this low utility cost season even further is one of our number one strategies for keeping our expenses down.
Let me start by sharing a classic analogy that illustrates what I’m talking about. I’m sure you’ve heard the story before, but you probably haven’t thought about it in relation to your gas or electric bill.
It is said that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, he’ll immediately jump right out. But, if you drop the frog into comfortable water, then gradually heat the water to boiling, the frog will be toast (well, boiled).
I can picture this frog-in-the-pot scenario happening, but husband Mike thinks it would never actually happen. Either way, we’re too nice to test it out.
Whether or not the frog story is accurate, most of us would agree that gradual, subtle changes are more easily accepted than sudden, drastic changes.
I want to use the principle of the frog analogy (in the reverse) to explain how we save on heating costs.
When people hear how low we keep our thermostat during the winter they think we’re nuts! They can’t imagine changing their home thermostat from 78 degrees down to 58 degrees in the middle of January.
Neither can I! Like a frog placed in boiling water, I would hop right out!
Our secret to saving on heating bills is that we wait as long as possible to turn our heater on or light a fire in the wood stove.
Like the frog who gradually gets used to increased temperatures, our bodies gradually acclimate to a lower temperature.
In addition to normal acclimation, we dress appropriately to increase our temperature stamina. We wear sweaters and slippers around the house. In the morning, I always put a warm robe on over my pajamas when I first get up. In the evenings, you’ll find me quilting, reading, or working on the computer wearing a hoodie on with the hood on.
Our kids all have their own robes and slippers along with hoodies. We have fuzzy blankets and warm quilts in nearly every room.
Lest you worry that our kids are suffering, the truth is that our kids handle the cold (and heat) far better than us grown-ups (especially me). When we lived in my in-laws basement while we were paying off six figures of student loans, our kids would run around the cold cement floors with bare feet and and short sleeves. It didn’t even faze them.
We love challenges and competitions, so seeing how long we can go before turning on the heat (or having our first fire in the wood stove) is actually fun for us. (Maybe we are crazy.) When we eventually do turn on the heat, we don’t crank it up to 78. We just turn it up a wee bit from the temperature that we decided was just too low. If the temperature starts to dip to that point, the heater kicks in and we’re fine.
Of course waiting to turn on your heat isn’t our only strategy for saving on utilities in the winter. Here are eight additional strategies that help us keep our utility expenses down in the winter.
- Dressing warm when you’re inside means you don’t need to heat the air as much to be comfortable.
- Using these window insulation kits is a great way to prevent losing heat to drafty windows. We have found these to make a huge difference in our bedrooms.
- Consider using a space heater instead of central heat if you’re only using a small area in your house (like if you work from home and spend the entire day alone in one room),
- A draft-stopper like this or this will help from losing heat to the outside or colder areas of the house. Rolling up a towel, isn’t quite as convenient as either of those products, but it’s a free option that does the trick pretty well.
- Only heat the areas you use. Close the heating vents in unused rooms in your house (guest bedrooms, storage areas, unused basements, etc). Use the draft-stoppers linked above to prevent those closed off rooms from sharing air with parts of the house you’re heating.
- While leaving curtains open during the day can warm your house with the sunshine, close your curtains at night to provide an additional buffer from the cool outside air.
- Run your ceiling fans in reverse to push the warm air down. This is especially important if you have high ceilings since the warm air will accumulate high up. There is usually a little switch near where the fan meets the ceiling to reverse the fan’s direction.
- Having layers of bedding to create air pockets can keep you toasty enough to turn the heater down significantly. One of my readers who lives in a frigid area shared an awesome guest post several years ago where she taught her smart strategy for bedding layers. I was blown away by what a huge difference this has made!
No matter what efficiency strategies you employ, waiting as long as possible to turn on the heat and keeping the thermostat low when you do will increase your savings. Each day you wait to turn on the heat will save you money and provide a fun challenge as well.
How about you?
- How long do you wait before turning on the heat when the weather cools off?
- Do you dress warmly at home in order to keep the thermostat set low?
- Do you think the frog would really get boiled?
This freshly updated post was originally published ten years ago in October 2014.
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