Frugal Moms

While cruising through other frugal blogs, I am hearing a desperation I have never heard before in the comments.  People talk about not being able to fill their oil tank but once a winter and having it only last 3 months, when winter lasts twice as long.  I have heard of mothers and fathers huddled with their children in front of the parlor wood stove with curtains draped on every door way  to keep warm at night.  This is from people living in nice suburban homes with relatively well paying, or some would, think jobs.  I’ll be honest, this kind of poverty being seen on such a wide spread basis is frightening.  I’m only 28, but I have never seen anything like this.

If this is how the middle class is doing, imagine how the poor are doing.  You can thank those comments for the ideas presented here.  Most I did not come up with.  I am not about to say I did.  In my family we have put plastic on the windows, and consolidated our sleeping space to the front room where our wood stove is, but only on the coldest nights of the year.

Some have placed quilts over their windows to block out the winter cold.  This is supposed to work especially well with poor windows.  I should have tried this years ago.  Another family described rationing heat, putting heat on at the absolute coldest parts of the night only and limiting it to 58 to 60 some odd degrees.  This seems sensible but a bit cool.  I suppose with enough blankets and squeezing two kids to a bed this would be perfectly fine. As we don’t have a heating system where we can set the tempature (exactly) I can’t tell you how well it will save in the monetary department.

Still other families are shutting up whole rooms of their house that are used less frequently.  One of these could be a bath room, if you use a space heater for the times you do use it to shower/bathe.  In our house, the bath room is always cold because it is far from the wood stove.  We use a small electric heater to warm it for baths.

Of course sweaters, socks, slippers, quilts, and shaws are all popualr remedies for the cold.  However, did anyone think of eating more soup?  A filling inexpensive meal that warms you to the bones.  Nothing is so good as a bowl of veggie chicken soup when coming in from the snow, except when it is homemade.  It’s lighter in calories many times too.  On the very coldest days I make chicken soup in my crock pot for the kids to sip on all day.

Then off course some people use their ovens to heat.  This is an awful waste if you ask me. If you are baking enough muffins for the whole week fine, but don’t leave the thing on and open to stay warm.  your electric bill will be awful.  Then there is recycling the hot dryer air.  I’m on the fence about this.  I don’t see the benefits.  What ever you do…if you are freezing cold… huddling together will help share body heat… a nice perk of being married.  : )

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