Unique techniques for keep your home warm in winter

This being a cold winter in northern Michigan and propane prices being astronomically high, I've been researching ways to keep my house, and more importantly me, warm. Now I rent from the Grand Traverse County Parks and Recreation via the Grand Traverse Conservation District, but frankly astronomical bills aren't something that anyone enjoys and I don't need to live in a sauna.  So I've been on the lookout for simple green tricks to keeping a warm house.

I came across this really awesome article on Huffington Post that had some unique ideas. It's titled 9 Unusual Ways to Keep Your Home Warm Without Turning Up the Heat and the points that I found interesting were: set your ceiling fans to rotate clockwise, add some layers to your floor, turn off your bathroom fan, and worry about the person, not the house.

Changing the rotation of your ceiling fan can seriously force the warm air down to help you keep warm? Blasphemy! Totally wish I had ceiling fans in my house just so I can use this trick.

Bare floors can suck 10 percent of my heat from my house? Thank you National Energy Foundation for providing me with this knowledgeable statistic. I'm glad most of my house is carpeted but perhaps the kitchen could use an area rug.

The bathroom fan thing really makes common sense; hot air rises, fan leads directly outside, basically means cold kitchen and bathroom. Note to self: further communicate this to roommates.

Most importantly out of all of these fun techniques, worrying about your warmth instead of a hot house really hit home. Now that's not saying that you shouldn't be worried if you have a frozen pipe, which I did but a space heater is keeping it company at night though it is an exposed pipe located in an unheated part of the house which is another tale. Part of the beauty of winter is spending snowy days bundled up on the couch with hot cocoa and a good book. Walking around the house in flannel pajamas and cushy socks are a right of winter and definitely not something I'd do in the July heat. The house needs to be warm enough to live comfortably but reasonable enough to accommodate the challenges of winter, like high propane costs.

Sunset in Houghton, MI
February 6, 2014

Enjoy winter everyone. Be thoughtful of your energy usage and marvel in the beauty winter brings us.