Made It Through Summer

Yeah! We made it through the summer without turning on the central air once. Lord knows we could not afford to cough up $200+ a month to keep things cool. We survive with screens I bought to hang in the doors and fans to keep the air circulating. The fans only added an extra $10-$20 a month to the normal electric bill which was way better than an extra couple hundred dollars we could not afford.

Despite Cherokee's protest and belief we would either melt or die of heat stroke, we were fine. She grumbled occasionally through the summer. But she always finds something to grumble about. She's like her father that way. I swear the man has Terminal PMS. I'm more of a suffer in silence person. So if I'm saying something about it, the shit is hitting the fan. Duck! And I don't like to argue. So if I'm arguing with you, I'm positive I'm correct and most of the time I am correct. Which is really frustrating because nobody ever listens to me.

And the challenge now? WINTER! Arg. I am not a fan of being cold. I hate being cold. I'll shovel snow because it has to be done. But you're not going to catch me out in the freezing cold, freezing my precious assets off participating in some crazy white people's sport like skiing or ice skating. My idea of a proper winter activity is curling up in front of a warm fire with some hot coco and a good book. If I need exercise, I'll invite someone special to join me by that fire and we can wrestle. Totally a win,win situation.

So if you haven't guessed it. I'm not looking forward to winter. I discovered last winter I'll spend over $200 a month trying to keep us warm in this rental and it never got warm downstairs where our bedrooms are. Old aluminum window, basement bedrooms and improperly placed heat vents makes it impossible to keep downstairs warm in the winter with the central heat system. I had a couple of space heaters that I used down there and that helped. But I still often found myself shaking like a leaf in the middle of the night with my teeth chattering from the cold. Not fun and it makes for an exhausted lady at work when you didn't sleep properly because you were shivering and shaking all night.

The plan for this winter? Make it through the winter without turning on the central heat. It's not going to heat the downstairs anyway where we sleep. And at first I wasn't sure what to do. Moving is not an option. I just don't have the money to move at this time and I can barely afford this place. I cannot afford a nicer place. And I was checking out the electric heaters at work one day trying to figure out which would be the best for downstairs. One, it had to be one I could afford, be on the small side and capable of heating most of the downstairs which consist of two small bedrooms, a small full bath, a short hall and a small laundry area. I'm not worried about trying to heat upstairs because hot air rises. It'll be fine.

I had no idea which heater to purchase to add to the space heater I already owned. So I decided to ask a coworker for that department if she had any recommendations and I explained the situation to her. She asked if I had considered purchasing some electric blankets. Thank you, Amber. You're an angel. I had not considered electric blankets. We had one old yellow electric blanket in the house when I was a kid and my mother wouldn't let us use it and I never saw it get used. My mother acted like the thing was the devil. Which it couldn't be because that's her job.

Wow, electric blankets are not cheap. And I wanted my daughter and I to each have a nice one. Besides, if Cherokee didn't like the texture, she wouldn't use it and I would have wasted money. I don't like to waste money and we don't have money to waste. So I started shopping around and I didn't like what was available at Walmart and stuff. Plus, I would have needed to shell out a chunk of money all at once that we couldn't afford.

So thank you Fingerhut. I found an electric blanket that I was sure Cherokee would love and I was able to get two. They're not cheap blankets. But my Fingerhut account allowed me two get two very nice electric blankets that I have a small monthly payment for that I can manage comfortably. And I really like my new electric blanket. It has 10 heat settings. 1 being the lowest and ten being the hottest. Thus far I have't needed to turn my blanket on any higher than two. If I shut my bedroom door, not only does it keep me nice and cozy, it heats up my whole room.

It's not super cold and snowy yet, but so far so good. Yes, I'm going to have a higher electric bill. But at this point I'm not expecting the electric bill to get any worse than last winter. Plus, my gas bill isn't going to jump because I'm not going to run the central heat. We'll take it one day at a time and see how it goes.