There’s one easy way to stay warm in winter: crank up your thermostat, and then hope you don’t cringe too badly when you get your heating bill!
But there are also a lot of effective, low-cost ways to stay warm in the winter that DON’T involve your eyes bugging out when you see your utility bill has doubled.
1. Dress warmly around the house
This suggestion may have you saying, thanks, Captain Obvious…Butwe also want to emphasize that covering your head and feet are the best ways tostop heat from escaping your body.
We totally understand that for all the cold-blooded folksout there, the suggestion to “dress warmer” might still leave themuncomfortably shivering. So it helps to know that investing in wool socks andeven a wool cap to wear indoors, if necessary, is more important when it comesto keeping a naturally cold person warm, than just throwing on a sweater orblanket.
And yes, we know that wool items are a little more expensive, but certainly less expensive than a heating bill over $200!
Also, two words: loose layers!
2. Use your ceiling fan
Yes, turning your ceiling fan on in the middle of the winter seems like it would be super counterintuitive. But actually, it’s not counterintuitive if you rotate it counter-clockwise! If your fan is able to rotate in reverse mode, then the room gets warmer because the cool air is sucked up towards the ceiling and the warm air is pushed to the floor where you’re at.
There’s conflicting research done on this, with a study from Kansas State University doing a study concluding that there’s no point in using a ceiling fan for this purpose in winter. But the University of Arkansas has a contradictory study showing that running your ceiling fan counterclockwise is up to 30% more efficient!
3. Install a programmable thermostat
You’ve probably seen ads for smart thermostats before and thought to yourself, “Great, spend a bunch of money to maybe save a little bit on your heating bill each month.” But actually, third-party studies show that a smart thermostat is almost guaranteed to pay for itself in a couple of years. For example, according to the Department of Energy, you save about 1% on your heating bill for every eight hours you keep your home one degree colder. And your smart thermostat’s job is to keep your home one degree or more colder in winter when you’re not home.
Let’s say your smart thermostat recognizes that you’re nothome and keeps things efficient for 10 extra hours every week. And let’s saythe smart thermostat turns the temperature down by five degrees.
Over the course of the month, that’s a total of 25% off yourheating bill!! You can imagine that if you are slashing a quarter off your billevery month, the smart thermostat will indeed soon pay for itself.