The recent weather we have been having here has really made me start thinking about getting ready for winter (sorry, I need little encouragement as Autumn is my favourite season!).
To try and cut our gas and electricity costs we have already had cavity wall insulation put in but I really want to keep our heating off for as long as possible - last year we made it to the first week of October, this year I am hoping to make it to November, but we shall see.
To help me along I have been following the fantastic 'preparations for winter thread' on the old style forum at
money saving expert. They have some great ideas and it is a wonderful inspiration.
After sitting down and having a think about what we did last year and how we can improve, I've come up with my 'Winter Prep' list:
- Kitchen: Last year our kitchen was freezing first thing in the morning probably because we have 2 large windows, a patio door and a door to the garage and no curtains or blinds up! So I have bought 2 door curtains off ebay (fantastic value for money at £7 each plus they are lined) and Dunelm Mill have really reasonably priced thermal blinds, so I ordered some blinds for the windows. - All done
- A tip from the moneysavingexpert forums is to put fridge magnets over key holes to stop a draught, so I will definately be doing this with our garage door, providing the kids don't move it!
- Living Room: We only have very thin curtains up at the moment (until we can afford some heavy weight ones) so last year I dug out a pair of voile tie top curtains that I had in the loft and tied them to the curtain poles behind the existing curtains to create a lining effect. This worked really well, but this year I have a blind for the window as well, so that should really help to keep the heat in - All done
- All the bedrooms already have lined curtains or thermal blackout blinds. Last year I bought some cheap fleecy throws for the children so that they could have them on their beds for added warmth but it turns out they love them so much (and they are really toasty) that they also come downstairs with the kids first thing as well so they can snuggle up on the sofa. I also have another throw for OH and myself for the evenings.
- Another tip from MSE is to put your summer duvet underneath the sheet of your bed for added warmth and snugness. What a great way to store the summer duvets! The children don't have seperate duvets but instead I have found 2 old cot bed duvets which I am going to use instead - amazingly we are still using our summer duvet so as soon as the weather really turns I will swap these over.
- Slippers - All of us now have slippers and dressing gowns so no excuse for being cold in the morning! - All done, just need to remind everyone to use them!
- Hall - we are lucky enough to have a porch on our house which stops the worst of the cold but we still have quite a draft blowing through the hall door so I really need to get a heavy weight door curtain - still waiting for the right one to appear on ebay!
- Energy Saving Lightbulbs - I know some people really don't get on with these, we seem to be lucky and they don't affect us so we have started changing all the lightbulbs over to energy saving ones. We do have quite a few halogens at the moment which are just too expensive to replace so instead we are trying to keep those lights off and just use side lamps which have the energy saving bulbs in them.
This is just a quick list which I intend on adding to when I think of more things. One last thing that I have invested in is an Owl energy monitor (a fab bargain off ebay) to see how much electricity we are using - wow, these things are a real eye opener. Since getting it we have really become aware of how much we are wasting so everyone is making the effort to turn off lights, we are also switching things off at the mains and when the oven is on I try and cook as much as possible (if we are making oven chips then I will try and bake a tray of muffins or biscuits etc at the same time to make good use of the electricity rather than having the oven on two seperate times). So hopefully, using the above list we should be able to cut down our gas and electric this year and save ourselves some pennies.
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