How Low Do You Go?

As the cold front moved in today I was reminded of our goal to use little to no natural gas heat this winter.  We have worked all summer collecting free firewood and plan to heat as much as possible with only that.  In all honesty, the only way for us to use NO gas heat is for the gas company to come shut the meter off!  We are just too modern and our bodies aren't accustomed to adjusting to such sharp increases or decreases in temperature.  Have you ever seen fat people shiver?  It's not pretty! But my philosophy is that you've got to start somewhere and this is how we're drawing the line in the sand on the utility issue.

What temperature do you set your thermostat at?  70 degrees... 68 degrees?  Or are you one of the wild ones who goes as low as 65 degrees?  We typically are the 66 to 68 degree family with a fire in the fireplace as often as we can manage, and I have no problem cooking and baking in the winter.  I consider all the warmth I'm generating just by actually cooking with something other than a microwave or crock-pot to be free heat.

Well this year we are shooting for a fire in the fireplace most days, and a general setting of 60 on the thermostat.  Guess who is getting zip-up footie jammies for Christmas!!! (J/K) Racey said I could have and wear them but as soon as I touched one toe on the bedroom floor I better find something else to wear!  lol!  McClane is going to fuss, I can hear it already... but what do you do.  Natural gas is a non-renewable resource and we as a planet are using it at an unsustainable rate.  Last year several reports came out showing how we almost ran out of natural gas up north.  As it becomes more scarce, and the price continues to increase how do you plan to deal with this issue?  I'm not recommending no heating or only wood heating because that's usually not sustainable either (unless you personally plant bunches of trees every year) but we need to start thinking about how we will deal with changing times.

I popped down stairs and checked our current temp at 7:00 pm and the thermostat read 64 degrees!  Since it's just October 19, and this is the first real day of cold this season I think we have our work cut out for us.  What do you think?

Racey throwing a snowball at me

All joking aside, here is the Freeze Yer Buns challenge I discovered last year at the end of winter.  This is half of what helped me see what a real issue this is.  Even if you think we are crazy and you know your spouse would never go for something like this, just give it a look.  It's good information to know.

Btw, I'm free to house sit any frigid night this winter! ;-)