Tips for Keeping Your Home Warm

Tips for keeping your home warm

• Open your curtains during the day. To let in as much sunlight as possible, make sure to open your blinds or curtains at every window. This will naturally warm your home at literally no cost.
• Close your curtains at night. Once the sun goes down, there is no need to keep the curtains open. During the winter, the warm air can only escape through your windows at night. So, be sure to close up any blinds or curtains to trap as much heat as you can inside your house. You also might consider swapping out thin curtains for thicker ones during the colder months. These may be a wise investment if your house gets chilly.
• Consider the real effects of a wood-burning fireplace. A wood-burning fireplace keeps the surrounding area toasty, but it pulls cold air into the house and heat is exhausted up the chimney. This is very inefficient when it comes to heating up your entire house. Also, be sure to keep the flue on the fireplace closed when you're not using it. Otherwise, you are essentially leaving a window open in your home, through which cold air can enter and heat can escape.
• Use ceiling fans' reverse "winter" settings to push hot air back down towards the floors. By spinning in the other direction, fans can take that warm air that rises up to the ceiling and pass it back down towards where you are sitting. Make sure you don't use too high of a setting because fans can begin to cool the air if they are moving too quickly.
• Don't block the vents with furniture. As winter approaches, check around your entire house to make sure no furniture is blocking any of your vents. If necessary, adjust the positions of couches, desks and bookshelves -- even if it's just for the colder months.
• Check your doors and windows for gaps and leaks. If you have a doggy door, you definitely want to seal it up for the winter. Also, inspect your doors and windows for potential leaks that may allow warm air to escape. Sometimes, you'll need to buy door sweeps to seal the gaps on the bottoms of doors. For the sides and tops of doors, as well as windows, it can be a good idea to use silicone as a weatherstripping tool.
• Close doors in rooms to create a warmer atmosphere. First, if you spend a lot of time in a specific room, close the door to create a sauna environment and trap the heat. On the other side of that coin, close the doors of unused rooms to contain the heat in the most used area of the house.
• Cook with the oven. This can kill two birds with one stone, providing you a meal while helping warm up your home! While you're at it, avoid using the fan above the oven because it will pull the heat right out of your house. The same goes for bathroom fans, so use them sparingly.
• Put down area rugs on uninsulated wood floors. Carpets can instantly enhance the coziness of any room, trapping all of the heat that can potentially escape through the floor.

By maximizing your efficiency on all of these fronts, you can fight an effective war on the cold this winter. Good luck, and stay warm!