Cost Effective Ways to Winterize Your Home

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When winter comes, and the chills with it, it is time to winterize your home! That doesn’t mean getting on the phone, calling up the oil company, and turning up the thermostat to 85 degrees! That would burn a wallet-sized hole right through your pocket. There are cheaper ways to winterize your home.

Keep more money in your pocket and follow these easy tips to winterize your home instead.

Start Here to Winterize Your Home

Insulation

First things first. Insulation is vital to a warm and energy efficient home. Holes and gaps near your windows and doors will promote heat loss, because heat will very easily escape your house. It’s like having a hole in your jacket; it will not keep you warm. Some stores offer spray-on rubber to seal cracks better, and this works well, but you can also buy insulating foam to put under your door, around windows, etc. Even door draftstoppers help. This will keep your house a lot warmer with minimal expenses.

Insulate Yourselves

Throw on that extra clothing. A warm sweater is necessary this time of year. The process of insulation does not only apply to the house. The people inside the house are obviously going to be complaining about the cold if they are wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Sleep with a thick blanket, and even if it means wearing a jacket, or two layers of pants around the house, do it! If you feel warm and toasty, you won’t need to winterize your home any further. And you can avoid having to turn the temperature up.

Keep Your Feet Warm

Wear socks and slippers. In fact, fuzzy socks or slippers are simple necessities this time of the year. Seems I am forever telling my kids to put their socks back on. When they come in from school the first thing they do some days is kick off their socks. Your feet lose body heat too, but many people overlook this and fail to properly insulate them.

Comfort

Make sure you are comfortable around your house, so if this means taking a small break to just lie down on the sofa with a blanket and a pillow, just to watch some TV, do it. Your body may be able to recover and warm up. Another very comforting thing to do is to take a warm/hot shower, although to some this may be expensive. What many don’t realize is that a hot shower is sometimes less expensive than a hot house.

Comfort can also come in a lot simpler forms, such as a warm bowl of soup. If you believe it helps, go for it, because if you are satisfied with the temperature, there is no need to sweat the other things.

Tips

If you live in a more secluded area, your house will be more expensive to heat. Houses that are grouped tightly, as well as apartments and condominiums, actually share heat, similar to how humans huddling together share body heat. So, maybe consider this if you are house hunting right now.

Seal Your Windows and Doors or Use Weather Stripping

The most abundant heat loss problems lie in the windows and the doors. Proper sealage is very important! Many people don’t realize the simpler problems, and something so easy as simple $10 caulking or weather stripping can save them $50 on the heating bill! This is one we need to do right now actually. Our home is now about 13 years old and it has original windows which are starting to show some signs of losing the tight seal they once had. So, it’s time for us to fix that.

Don’t Forget a Smart Thermostat

Smart Thermostats like the NEST adjust efficiently and save you money. We have a NEST and love it. Here’s what we like about our NEST and why we added one to our home.

And MOVE More

This tip is just common sense. It sounds simple, but I can’t really stress this enough. If you have a job where you sit still a ridiculous amount of time during the day as in at a desk in a home office then you will get cold from sitting and not moving. Get up and take the stairs a few times. Or go for a quick walk outside, or just walk around, pick up a vacuum for a break. (This is one thing I do all year round because I always have a Hoover vacuum around.)

Stay Warm Without Going Broke

Again, keep yourself comfortable. If you are warm, you don’t need your house to be warm. This also applies for leaving the house. If you can go to a friend’s house, or hang outside of your house, you can turn off the heat to the point you are saving money by avoiding going through the troubles of winterizing your house in the first place!

Remember, proper sealage and personal comfort are the two most important things when winterizing your home properly. Soon enough, you will be relaxed, and happy, enjoying the beauty of winter, without being cold and uncomfortable.