Frugal but happy in winter?

adelight

newgirl i love all those things, you've got me really excited for the cold weather :j
lostinrates i'm trying to make the most of holidays like that as it breaks the year up and is a good excuse to get together with friends and family in silly outfits with new foods.

lessonlearned

I enjoy the changing of the seasons and do all of the rugs/throws/candles bit too.

I also change the colours of my house with the seasons, I have a summer look and a winter look. The basics are neutral, lots of cream, walls, curtains are cream, wooden floors and they don't change. I just change all the accent colours and accessories as the mood takes me.

My summer look this year has been shades of green for throws, cushions, ornaments, plants etc For the winter that changes to reds, oranges, purples and berry colours - really seems to warm everything up. Soft lights, table lights, floor lamps seem much cosier than overhead lights.

Also "real" food, lots of hearty casseroles, proper puddings, mulled wine, plenty of good books, dvds, afternoon naps, crafting. I could quite cheerfully hibernate till spring.

However, to avoid SAD I do make a point of going out every day. Winter walks, a trip to the library, a drive to a local beauty spot or a park with a flask of coffee and a picnic, art galleries, museums are all free. An afternoon at the pictures is cheap and cheerful. Mooching round car boots, antique fairs, charity shops is cheap and cheerful retail therapy.

It is already getting quite Autumnal here, yesterday was a real foretaste.

gettingready

jd1000 wrote: »

Does anyone have some tips of how to stay cheerful during the dark winter months (I love christmas!) without getting bored/depressed

Get a cat.. or 2

They provide great heating during winter.. my lot does anyway.. They purr to cheer you up.

Get a dog - they wag their tails when they see you - cheers me up every time...

But hey - I am a weirdo

CupOfChai

Lovely chilly walk then back for warming soup or other such meal and a snuggle under a blanky! I like to go and feed the ducks in winter. I don't bother to go in summer as all the kids have been and they're stuffed full up and don't want to know, but on the freezing winter days the poor things are starving and they rush to get food off you!

Lots of cooking/baking too, then you can be warm by the stove.

p00

gettingready wrote: »

Get a cat.. or 2

They provide great heating during winter.. my lot does anyway.. They purr to cheer you up.

Get a dog - they wag their tails when they see you - cheers me up every time...

But hey - I am a weirdo

My 2 Borders are the warmest things going and love to snuggle. And they wag their tails when they see me and it cheers me up too

jd1000

Some great tips here, thought I would give the thread a bump as the long nights are soon to be upon us!

krlyr

Not quite frugal, perhaps, but MSE in the sense of managing money even if not saving it...we spent last winter being really stingy with the gas and electric as it was our first winter in the new house, first time I'd ever been in a house with central heating or gas, and OH's first time managing bills really (in the last house we lived with my brother and his girlfriend so just overestimated and split costs between the 4 of us). So, like you - lights went off the instant you didn't need them (or in OH's case, the instant he didn't need them - I had to tell him off a few times for leaving me cooking in a dark kitchen!), we were really strict about how long we put the heating on, etc. and it was a bit miserable, being too cold but too reluctant to make use of the heating.
This year, we thought we'd plan ahead and worked out our average electricity usage and decided to set that as our electricity/gas DDs. It means we've been overpaying in summer, but means we can put our minds at ease in winter knowing there is credit on the account. It may have been a bit more sensible to put the extra money aside and earn interest on it, but we're locked in to fixed price plans so not going to switch suppliers anyway, so we know we'll use up the credit and it means the money isn't spent anywhere else (there's always the temptation to borrow cash from a savings account if you know you don't need it immediately!)

One thing we did find helped last winter though was an electric blanket. Switched it on half an hour before bed and it meant we had a cosy, warm bed to climb into - bliss! We also found an electric fan heater useful when we just wanted to warm up one room, as our central heating doesn't have a thermostat and doesn't shut off in the other rooms very easily, so it was less wasteful to just use the fan heater to warm up the living room if we were in there watching TV, or the bedroom if it was particularly cold.

[Deleted User]

What really cheers me up on a wet, dank, cold and miserable winters day is to go and look at my store and particularly the homemade jams and pickles. If I'm lucky enough to need to open a new jar, the smell brings back summer and memories of the day I picked the fruit and made the jam. I don't know why but it makes me happy. I always try to open blackberry and apple on Christmas Day for breakfast, it reminds me that summer is a coming back! Cheers Lyn.

Melaniep101

Gotta agree with krylr about the Electric blanket, we bought one last year and it was a complete godsend! Nothing worse than getting in to freezing bed on a cold night! We got one that you can set to different temperatures on each side, and that you could programme to turn off after an hour so that its not on all night. Lovely!

We also have a log burner, and we're itching to get that on the go again this year. The heating is only on for a short while every day, until the log burner warms up.

I also love coming home from the stables on a cold day to a nice fire and a pot of tea and some toast - Bliss!

valk_scot

I have an open fireplace but seldom use it, I've got one of these electric "logburner" type fires/fan heaters for when we need to heat the lounge before the CH goes on. It looks really cosy with just the coal effect on.

I like textiles in warm colours too, winter colours like deep reds and winter green. I change the cushions and throws and the lounge curtains. Lots of lamps, not overhead lights. And I change the ornaments and put out candles and twinkly things like brass bowls for pine cones, and baskets. The blue and white china and blue and white curtains and the china bowl of shells and driftwood go away for the winter.

And we got another kitten this summer so there will be three cats fighting for the warm spot in front of the fireplace, lol.