Cranking up your thermostat may make your home more comfortable during the winter, but it will cost you when it comes time to pay the heating bills. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to warm up your home without having to rely on your heat.
The following are seven cheap hacks that will help you keep your home warm during the winter season:
Shower with the door open. A hot shower tends to generate a lot of heat. That hot air is most likely going to waste once you finish showering since you won’t be using the bathroom much after that. In fact, you’ll probably turn the bathroom fan on to ventilate the bathroom space. Instead, open up the bathroom door while you are showering. This will allow the heat generated by your shower to leave the bathroom and spread through your home.
Open the oven door after you turn it off. First of all, never use your oven as a heating source. Turning the oven on and opening the door just to heat your kitchen can be dangerous. However, if you’ve just used the oven to bake or cook something, then open the door once you’ve turned the oven off. The heat that your oven already produced will help warm up your kitchen.
Insulate windows with bubble wrap. If you notice a cold draft coming in from your windows but don’t want to spend the money to upgrade them, then an easy way to remedy the problem is to put bubble wrap across the window’s glass. Bubble wrap will help insulate your windows, cutting down the amount of heat you’re losing by as much as half.
Use your ceiling fans. If you have ceiling fans, then put them to use in the winter as well as in the summer. What many people don’t realize is that ceiling fans aren’t just used as a way to make your home feel cool. Most ceiling fans have a switch that will reverse the rotation of the blades. When the blades move clockwise, your ceiling fans push rising heat back down into your rooms, thereby dispersing the warm air produced by your heating system more evenly throughout your home for better comfort.
Use your curtains. During the day, open the curtains on the windows facing the sun. This will allow as much of the sun’s heat to come into your home as possible. Close the curtains on the side facing away from the sun to help keep heat from escaping. When the sun goes down, close the curtains on all of your windows to keep cold air out and hot air in.
Use draft stoppers on your doors. A lot of heat can be lost at the bottom of your home’s doors. You can help trap the heat inside your home by using draft stoppers. You can purchase these or make your own. To make your own draft stopper, simply use a long sock and fill it with old pillow stuffing or quilt batting. To make sure that it will stay in place, throw some popcorn kernels in there as well.
Add tin foil to your radiators. By placing tin foil on the back of your radiator, you’ll help to reflect the heat that’s produced back into your rooms instead of allowing it to just rise up to the ceiling. You can even purchase special reflective radiator foil, although regular kitchen tin foil will do the job as well.
These seven inexpensive hacks will help keep your home warm all winter long.