We have a plan. This should save money on our heating bills, and keep us warm this, and every winter.
1. Have heating on a timer first thing in the morning, and from about six to seven in the evening only. This should mean we can get out of bed, have a shower in the warm, and the children can have a bath and go to bed in the warm.
2. Learn to light and use the woodburner, I seem incapable of lighting it and keeping it alight, this may be me, the size of the wood, or draw. But I simply must learn and definitely put it on for four/five o'clock on the evening on cold days.
3. Collect as much 'found' wood as possible for the woodburner, and add to coal and wood piles whenever cheap supplies found.
4. Put blankets and spare duvets on top of mattress' but under the sheets, we did it on ours last night and its fantastically warm.
5. All wear and find slippers, finding more of a challenge but am sure we all have a pair somewhere.
6. Put as many rugs down on the plain wooden floors as possible, and fill any gaps in the floor boards with tiny tight pieces of rolled up newspaper.
7. Heavy curtains, we have decent fitting curtains in most of the rooms now, just lacking some in the kitchen. The kitchen door has a number of air gaps around it. Top tip to find these is simply run your hand slowly around the door to find cold spots. I must find a decent piece of material to make in to a curtain this weekend, and fit it, am positive we're losing lots of heat through the door, and around, the admittedly lovely picture window.
8. Make sausage dogs for kitchen door, and dining room door, again these could be lovely, and keep us nice and warm.
9. Wear jumpers, we all need to reminded of this, as given a preference, am afraid we'd all prefer the heating on and wandering around in t-shirts and shorts.
10. Wear my lovely hand made leg warmers more in the evening to keep warm.
11. Just use one room in the evening, to heat up and stay warm. This should either be our bedroom, which we can now watch telly in, or the woodburning living room.
12. Buy some condensation granules for the windows at the front of the house, this really is a problem on sea facing windows all winter. Other than that will have to resort to drying the windows every morning. And frankly life is too short for that.
13. Hang out in the kitchen when we're cooking as its lovely and warm.
14. Buy firelighters in case I can't get the hang of the fire.
15. And the final outside heating part is sort out all our winter coats, hats, scarves and gloves, and wash them and put them in order of who they belong to on the coat rack. Can't believe its only just occurred to me that if say all my things were on one peg I could find them in the morning. This is good home learning borrowed from the nursery school.
Any other tips more than welcome...
5 comments:
I remember as a kid having these things I think we called Afghan socks or something. They were lovely patterned, knitted calf-length woolen socks with soles made from soft leather. They were fantastic for mooching round the house in.
Also, if you're not already, join your local 'freecycle'. It's fantastic. You get free stuff so long as you pick it up and people are always offering wood or things to cut up for wood.
Good luck.
I always wanted those socks with feet, they were a real 70's thing weren't they?
Actually think may have seen them in Hennes once so will need to keep looking.
We are in freecycle and agree its so great..don't see wood too often round here but must remember to check daily. We did get our wood basket from freecycle though!
I still have a pair of what we called "slippersocks". Is that very uncool of me??
Hx
Not at all, particularly not if they have festive patterns on them. It's all good.
Course the dog is acting as feet warmer at present - just another reason to miss her.
Hello Tatty
While its great to get free wood, if your wood burner has a chimney liner you need to be very careful and shouldn`t put in wood that has been painted. Ours has a chimney liner that will be ruined if we burn painted wood. I have difficulty lighting the wood burner too and often end up covered in ash from spending ages blowing into the burner to get it going. Thats as well as smelling of smoke! Fire lighters help loads. I like the idea of putting blankets under the sheets. I will have to try that one out.
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