Warm up to keeping your home cooler

In our house, the thermostat is a major hot zone. I’m always cold, my husband is always boiling hot. But there’s one thing we always agree on — the cost of heating our modest home has skyrocketed in the 10 years we’ve lived here.

Heating costs are only going up year after year, which is why we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out ways to keep the costs down. Taming your heating bill isn’t all that hard, and it doesn’t mean turning your house into a refrigerator. And while converting to a new, higher-efficiency furnace certainly has made a difference at our house, that’s not in everyone’s budget.

As the temperature drops, here are a few ways to make sure your winter heating bills don’t drag you down. Put on a sweater: This message comes to you courtesy of my 88-year-old father-in-law — when his kids complained about being cold, he told them to put on a sweater and run around the block. He was raised in Scotland and lived much of his adult life in the Arctic, so I can see his point.

But he’s right: putting on a sweater makes it easier to lower your thermostat. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, lowering the temperature in your home by around 0.5 C can shave 3 per cent off your energy bill. Even doing this at night while you’re under the covers will save you money every month. Buy a timer: One of these on your thermostat lets you keep your home cooler when you’re not around; you can set it to warm things up before you get home from work so that your home is nice and toasty when you arrive. Work from home? Consider a space heater: I work from home, which means I can’t turn the heat too far down in the day or my hands get too cold to type.

But the space heater in my office lets me keep the rest of the house cooler. It just heats one area for hours at a time, another way to save, especially if you spend a lot of time at home. Get out your tool box: There are a few basic home repairs you can do easily to keep the drafts out and the heat in.

Install weather stripping around your doors — it’s surprisingly easy.

Another quick fix: your electrical outlets can be drafty because they are poorly insulated. Remove the outlet cover and caulk around the edge, and you can stop those drafts. Use the sunlight: During the day, when the sun is actually shining, keep your blinds open to let the warmth heat the room instead of the furnace.

But remember to close the drapes or blinds when the sun goes down — drapes can prevent drafts from windows and keep the heat inside, where it belongs.