How warm do you keep your house, and how can you stand the cold?

[WindyCityMom]

qHi!  I'm wondering how warm you keep your house and if you keep it around 60, how you are able to handle the cold. 

Our furnace isn't working properly (we live in MILs basement, no, we don't pay rent atm and it's an illegal apartment).  We're using a space heater.  Without it, it's anywhere from 55 to 60 degrees in our main living space, and regardless of space heater use it's around 50 degrees in our bathroom and my DHs office.  With it, it kicks it up to 70ish which I'm okay with.  It's always colder in the bedroom area though, and I just can't take it. 

I don't know why I cannot take the cold.  I have some sensory processing issues and I really cannot take the cold.  Anything below 70 and I am freezing.  It's not just indoor temps, outdoor temps below 70 are horrible for me too.

How can I get myself accustomed to cooler indoor temps?  Wearing a ton of layers doesn't help much, because having my face and hands exposed to the cold gives me the chills and I shiver.  I also nurse my almost 1yo quite frequently, so many layers are very cumbersome.

[HeatherAtHome]

We keep our heat around 66F in our house. (18-20C in our living space, 15-17C in our bedroom)

Living space: I wear socks and heavy duty wool slippers all day long. I wear a nice warm sweater that buttons (so I don't need to pull if off over my head), often with sleeves that are a bit long so I can warm my hands. If I'm up and doing stuff I'm less cold but once I sit down I feel the chill more. I keep a lap blanket on the couch to cuddle in and sometimes use a wide knit scarf/shawl type thing around my neck/shoulders that I can huddle down into to keep my nose warm when we're watching a movie on a chilly evening. 

This winter I've been having 3-4 blankets on the bed. I wear flannel pjs and socks to bed. I start out feeling chilly but wake up in the night to take off socks and a blanket or two. 

We're working on insulating our house and have seen some improvement but still have things to do (our bedrooms especially are quite chilly). We keep our heat low because it's expensive enough as it is. On chilly nights when I feel cold to my bones, we either close the door on our living room and crank up the heat (small space, easier to heat) and hang out there or I take a nice hot bath, jump into warm pjs and hop into bed. 

I also sip cocoa (tea, coffee, warm soup would work). On really cold days I bake or make stews. Popcorn is a nice warm snack. 

Sometimes reading about people who have it worse off then you can make you feel warmer. The Long Winter comes to mind (little house on the prairie). 

[HollyBearsMom]

We live in a really old (250+) farm house that is poorly insulated and drafty.  We keep our heat at 60-62F, lower at bedtime. Even so you don't want to know our heating bill!! 

We wear lots of layers, warm slippers and drink lots of tea, LOL! 

The best thing I ever did was buy a heated mattress pad.  So warm and toasty.  I am reading more, thought that is just an excuse for heading up to bed to bask in the warmth of my electrically heated bed!

[freestylemama]

We keep our heat at about 65 during the day and 62 at night.  We all wear a long sleeved shirt plus a sweater or sweatshirt on top, plants and smart wool socks.  If I'm really cold I wear long john pants under.  When we're vegging we grab a throw (my MIL and GMIL are great at keeping us supplied with gorgeous blankets they crochet).  I wear birks in the house.  I was raised in a house where you weren't allowed to complain about the heat unless you were wearing a sweater.  I think it's a good policy. 

Before our DD was born we kept the house much colder.  She doesn't sleep well if it's not at least 62, so we set it there now.

[ecoteat]

 We had one really cold apartment years ago. The furnace was so inefficient and the windows were so terrible that we didn't even bother turning the heat on most of the time--the heat found its way out the windows so fast anyway. That winter I made myself a fleece sleep sack--basically just a tube with a closed bottom--and slept in that every night under many layers of blankets and a down comforter. Having an enclosed layer wrapped around me kept the body heat in better. During the day I'd bundle up. If I was doing something that I could park on the couch for, I'd put the space heater right in front of my feet and drape a blanket over my lap and the heater. I didn't have kids then, so I was able to spend more time sitting in one place than I can now, though. I remember COLD mornings taking a shower, and I'd just get dried off and dressed as fast as humanly possible. I wore down slippers, and even hats inside sometimes.

Ah, good times. I'm glad we only lived there one winter! Which reminds me... I need to get off my butt and fill the woodstove. I love my well-insulated, wood-heated house now!

[lifeguard]

Our house is just old & drafty - the only time it actually feels warm is when the furnace is actually running - as soon as it turns off again it very quickly feels cool. The bedrooms don't have their own heat vents in them so they are always downright cold. I must admit I LOVE sleeping in the cold bedrooms but being in there to change clothes or do anything else is miserable & when you first get into bed it takes some time before the bed feels warm.

Honestly, I have no choice but to tolerate how cool the rest of the house is. I wear socks & slippers (although I much prefer barefeet), keep everyone dressed & we keep blankets in the livingroom but I don't like it. Once I'm settled on the couch with a blanket I find it awfully hard to get up & get moving again. I get a lot less done in the cold months. I'd love to have the house above 70 at all times.

[EviesMom]

I don't have a thermostat, we just have 2 HVACs that have a warmer/colder knob and high/low on the blower. That said, the nice thing is that it's cheaper to run in the winter bc the building provides the heat. But, the windows are 100+ years old and drafty, and we're on the corner, and a brick building. I leave it on low when we're out, and turn it up 70% of the heat setting when we're home generally. If I had to guess, I'd say that the house is generally 68 during the day and 62ish at night or when we first return home? The kids bedroom though is warmer because it's upstairs and heat rises. Their room is always quite warm. Good, because they both kick all the covers off no matter the temp of the room. DH and my bedroom is small and it seems to be colder at first and then warm up from body heat during the night. There's a distinct rush of cold air into the room when DD opens the door to come in in the mornings.

We also have a space heater, which does a very impressive job, from when the HVAC system goes out about once/year. It's a tower style one. I think if you can get yourself warm first thing in the morning and when you first come home from being out in the cold, that may help. Sit right in front of the space heater then and focus on getting whatever is your cold trigger point warm fast. I tend to be okay if my neck and upper back are warm. My mother always needed her legs covered.

Edited by EviesMom - 12/15/10 at 10:31pm

[elus0814]

We keep our house anywhere from 68 to 74, depending on our mood that day. We live in military housing and utilities are included so we can keep it any temp. and not pay extra. It's funny because in the summer we like it cool, maybe 65, but in the winter we like it warm, generally 72. We're stationed in Florida right now so we don't have much in the way of winter clothes anyway.

[SandyBeachBums]

Have you seen the prtable oil heaters that look like an old radiator? They are amazing. Put one in each room. Keep it on the low setting at all hours. It is a nice warm heat. We love ours. The key is to not turn them off. If you turn them on high they are too expensive to run.

Make sure your windows are covered once it starts getting dark.

[luckymamaoftwo]

Generally during the day, I keep it around 68/69. Overnight we set it to 65.

We also use the radiator oil heaters and love them! 

[CookAMH]

Our thermostat isn't the most accurate during the day, but it's set at 65 (is in the dining room) and is usually reading a temp of 68-70. It's warm to me if it's 70. We have it go down to 50 or so at night, so it basically doesn't kick on at all until morning, I don't think. 19mo DS wears two layers of PJs, our winters are in the 40s. When it was unusually cold in the low 20s and teens a couple of weeks ago, he wore three layers of PJs :)

[velochic]

We heat a lot with wood, so often for days at a time, the furnace isn't used at all.  I keep our thermostat set to 18C most of the time (that's 64F) when I'm by myself.  That is about my comfort zone, as I don't spend a lot of time sitting, but am up and getting things done.  If the temp in the house falls below that, the furnace will kick on.  When dd and dh are home, we bump it up to 19C(66F) in case it falls below that.  I like to keep it well below 70F because, completely opposite of you, I cannot stand heat at ALL.  If the house gets near 70F, I'm in shorts and a T-shirt.  Otherwise, a T-shirt and sweats.  I almost never wear a sweater in the house.

My dh is cold-natured (he is from a sunny Mediterranean country) and what he does is drink warm drinks all day.  You might try that.

[Aeress]

Our house is between 62-65 during the day and it isn't bad. Our pellet stove isn't working, so we are using our boiler to heat the house. We have the old ironstone radiators upstairs and if we turn the heat up too much at night it gets too hot upstairs.

As others have mentioned, we wear slippers and try to keep active, the more we move the warmer we stay. Blankets are on every couch/chair for extra snuggles. I find polar fleece vests/wool vests add warmth without adding bulk. Might work for the adults...my kids don't like them.

[Denvergirlie]

We have a furance, but heat primarily with wood.

Furance is set to kick on at 50 degrees, so it's running when we get up in the morning, but quickly turns off once we get a fire started for the day.

We moved this past Feb 2010, so before that we were in a different house, and kept the heat at 62 during the day, and 55 at night (thermostat didn't go lower than 55).

Layers are your friend. We have wool blankets to cuddle with on the couch, and wore layers. Silk long underwear is so thin it's not a bother, but really makes a huge difference in keeping me warm.

I always have a fleece or wool zip/ button up sweater on during the winter.

We pre-heat our sheets with an electric blanket, but make sure it's off before we go to bed. The bedroom side of the house never gets above 58 during a winter day, unless we burn a fire in the master bedroom and then it might bring that side of the house up to 62 or so.

I grew up in a house that had the heat set at 72 in the winter, but wasn't willing to pay that high of a bill once I was on my own, so for the past 10+ years I've adjusted to be colder.

Layers, moving around, drinking hot beverages and cooking more in the winter is how we have survived. After a few weeks, you should adjust to it being colder.

best

[Liberty5_3000]

Right now our house is between 60 and 62 in the day and drops down to 57-58 overnight.  Like has already been said, I get by with layers, hot drinks and movement.  When I do sit down, I sit with my back up against the radiator :)  I love my wool blanket and wearing wool pants under my jeans is really helpful at keeping me warm without adding more bulk on my upper body.  Too many sweaters/shirts does get in the way trying to nurse.

[hillymum]

      I've always kept the heat down low to conserve money, but this winter I'm a single mom with no income so I'm being even more extreme (IMO). At night and when my children aren't home it's set to 60F and when they are home durring the day it's set to 65F which is begining to feel just right to us all. We are either moving around or cuddling up under blankets. In the evening I wrap up in knitted blankets and if I'm really cold I microwave a rice bag for 2 minutes to cuddle up to. Works like a charm!

  We all sleep in PJ's with socks on and layers of blankets topped with a down comforter.

    If the next gas bill is high I will have to think about all the boys sleeping in my room with me and having the heat off completly on the second floor.

[happysmileylady]

Um, WOW.  There's no way I could survive in some of your houses!

My house is only 8 years old, and it's well insulated, supposed to be energy star rated or something.  But, IMO, the heating system was poorly designed.  All of the heat vents are in the ceiling, on both floors.  So of course they blow heat, but tends to stay right at the ceiling.  Not only that, but most of the vents are positioned right above the windows.  So, when we run the furnace, although the thermostat says 73* or whatever, it does NOT actually feel like that.  Also, our upstairs gets substantially warmer, because of the whole heat rising thing.

Before we bought the house 8 years ago, we lived in an apartment where the complex paid for our heat.  I kept the apartment at 80*F.  Yes, 80*  That is what I was comfortable.  Now, we try to maintain it at 73* or 74*.  But, the $300+ gas bill is hard to swallow, so we went out and bought a kerosene heater.  We have the room it is in completely blocked off from the toddler, and we keep a close eye on it.  To be honest, it scares me to death but even running the kerosene heater to maintain the 73*F my toes and fingers get ICE cold, even with multiple blankets.  There is NO WAY I could do anything colder than that, and no other way to affordably keep it warm enough for me. 

Or the little ones...my 2 year old sleeps with a fleece blanket, a quilt made by her grandmother and a thick comfortable.  And she still wakes up with a cold nose.  The baby sleeps swaddled but if she breaks it, her hands are like ice in the morning. 

[limette]

I don't know that you can accustom yourself to cooler temps. I've lived in frigid areas all my life and I still get cold very easily.

I just checked the thermostat for the first time since moving here and it says it's 73 in here which I find hard to believe because I have a chill. It's -5 outside and we reloaded the wood stove 2 hours ago after letting it burn out last night.

[Ellien C]

Comfort in our own home is VERY important to both of us and it's a thing that we willingly spend money on. We both work outside the home, so it probably costs us less to do that than we would otherwise. I am COLD if the house is one degree below 70. I can tell whenever it's dropped to 68 or 69 because I'm cold. I'm not saying I can the difference between 73 and 74 but I can sure tell 69 for 70! So, when I'm home we keep the house at 70 degrees. (I'd even go for 72 but that's the compromise). DH is usually hot in the summer, so we pay to cool it to 70. I'd go for 80 in the summer and 72 in the winter, but DH is the opposite. He'd be 58-60 in the winter and 68 in the summer!

Anyway, I don't know that there is much you can do and I just wanted to provide this perspective that the house comfort is pretty important to me. A lot of people talk about having big food budgets so they can go all organic, but this is where we spend money.

[cristeen]

We dont have central heat, and this year, because of the LO, we cant even turn on the floor furnace. So that means most of the house is ambient. Thankfully we live in a moderate climate, but yesterday it was in the 50s.

We have a space heater in the room i share w DS, i keep it at 65. Bed has flannel sheets and a flannel comforter i picked up on clearance last summer. DS wears a wool shirt under his clothes, and at night he gets wool longies and socks under his fleece footie pjs. He is pretty good about staying under the blanket.

The rest of the house is pretty darned cold. During the day im wearing sweats and wool socks, and i have a comforter on tge couch for whenever i sit down. DS mostly stays in his pjs unless we're going out, then he gets his Robeez boots to keep his feet warm. I snack throughout the day (low blood sugar makes me colder), i drink hot tea, etc., to keep my hands warm. If it gets really bad, i'll go down to the basement during nap time... Because we're built on rock, the basement can be warmer than ambient on really cold days.

DHs bedroom is even colder than the rest of the house, so i got fleece sheets and a down comforter for his bed.