Preparing for winter III

Baileys_Babe

Baileys_Babe wrote: »

Thank you for all your suggestions for sourcing safety pins and curtain hooks. That will be my job for the week buying them.

Ordered both on bay of e, they arrived Thursday. I need to get to 1kea and buy more fleece blankets to continue lining the curtains. Thanks everybody for the ideas of where to look as well as motivating me to do it.

Today I collected some gas bottles and 2 small camping gas stoves which will help if we are unable to use our main cooker. Need to make sure we are some things that will be quick and easy to heat up.

^!£$&

Electric blanket advice anyone? Super cold in my new rented cottage and I'm awaiting to hear if I can have permission to put up curtains ha! Trying to figure out how else I can stay warm this winter? Thanks xxx

Popperwell

snowbrow wrote: »

Electric blanket advice anyone? Super cold in my new rented cottage and I'm awaiting to hear if I can have permission to put up curtains ha! Trying to figure out how else I can stay warm this winter? Thanks xxx

Great idea but the old Hot water bottle is good...fleeces, duvets, PJ's, Dressing Gowns, thermals, bedsocks, anything like that...also if possible warm drinks, soups and meals...

Becky_2

I used my flat mate today (that is a type of flat brush) to clean underneath side boards and behind radiators. On Mrs Moneypenny they said that the radiators give out more heat if they are clean. Ours were very dusty and horrible, hopefully this will make a difference.

I am hoping to persuade OH to order a kitchen runner tomorrow.

southerndave

Well thanks to this thread, this week we got our back door sorted with a thermal curtain all put up today. I also managed to fix the locks and latches so the damn thing shuts properly too. We also got proper mud guards for my boy's bike as he is cycling to school more often and it won't be long before the wet stuff is here.

ScattySkewbald

Been lurking for a little while now - you guys are all so organised!!! Just thought I'd mention I'd brought a couple of the Ikea fleeces off ebay for about £2.80 and free p&p. My local Ikea has been out of stock for months and although there a little more expensive, the extra wouldn't even cover my diesel to get there (plus it stops me spending even more once I'm there lol!)
Hope that helps someone

bossymoo

I had a sort of my clothes last night, after doing the kiddies earlier in the week. I think we all have lots of nice warn things, I just might want a couple of thermal tops for me (I only have one) and some thermal legs for DS. Oh and he needs slippers, growing feet!

I asked mil if I buy 2 door curtains will she make 1 into a pair of half length so the kitchen window matches the door. She measured and said it should work. The one I got for front door last year was cheap as chips and made a huge difference...

My kiddies had their new pjs on last night. Very cute and cosy.

shelley_crow

If anyone is looking for new quilts, Primark have some in cheap. My son's quilts were desperately in need of replacing. Get in quick though, I think this was a back to Uni offer. All quilts were 10.5 tog, single size were £5.50, double were around £7 and king size were £10.

Confuzzled

snowbrow wrote: »

Electric blanket advice anyone? Super cold in my new rented cottage and I'm awaiting to hear if I can have permission to put up curtains ha! Trying to figure out how else I can stay warm this winter? Thanks xxx

i cannot praise highly enough the combination of a fleece dressing gown over your clothing along side some slipper boots.

if you worry the neighbours will think you odd or a slob just shake it off your shoulders before answering the door!

the fleece is comfortable, loose and very warm as an additional layer, because most dressing gowns like this are long you have it cover down to mid calf, wearing slipper boots keeps your ankles warm too when sitting and pretty much, combined with the fleece dressing gown, has you blanketed in an extra layer

viscose/elastane blend leggings are great to keep your legs warm too as an added layer, on really cold days i wear them under my brushed cotton pj bottoms. if i'm wearing my pjs when i answer the door i don't bother shuffling off the dressing gown and usually just make some comment about 'excuse my appearance but since i work from home it's cheaper to heat me than the house' and then i usually get a chuckle and a comment along the lines of 'if i could wear pjs whilst i worked i would too'

i also keep a duvet or a fleece blanket over my lap whilst i'm working or watching telly, this helps immensely. i have some usb fingerless gloves that i sometimes wear at the computer whilst i'm working because hey i'm already paying for the computer to be on, the tiny draw for the gloves is negligible but keeps me from resorting to other far less efficient ways of warming the cold hands.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_trksid=p1000001.m570.l1313&_nkw=usb+fingerless+gloves&_sacat=11450 these are the fleece type here, my daughter has those, i have neoprene myself, personally i think hers are easier to take on and off and work with, as you can see they are very inexpensive.

a few years back i also picked up a tiny fan heater, mine works as either a fan for blowing air for cooling or for heating so it's been very useful in all seasons, think i picked mine up for about £15, it's small i have it on my desk for hot days when my graphics card gets tetchy about the heat but it's also a nice size to have at the foot of the sofa. on really cold nights we used it for about 10 minute blasts to take the chill off the air until we heated up the sofa duvet with our body heat. since we have storage heaters i thought this was really necessary in case we didn't get the balance right on a given night or there was a freak storm etc.

oh another way i find to warm up cold hands is a nice cuppa tea or coffee. i like the big cups, you can wrap both hands around it and it's just lovely to feel the thawing out sensation. my daughter once aptly put it 'a cup of chai tea is like a hug from the inside out' and she's right, a lovely warm drink will help up your core temperature (especially if you hold that cup up near your chest), it warms your hands and it helps you to relax, def a winner in my eyes, plus warming a kettle is cheaper than turning the heat up a notch!

hot water bottles are lovely and if you are really cold if you slip one inside your dressing gown it'll heat you right up. i've found the small ones quite good they only take about a mugs worth of water so good to fill up if you've overfilled the kettle when making your tea! great for prewarming beds too, helps you til your own body heat warms up the duvet! if you have the mini hot water bottles then it's really easy to have a few and have one at the chest level of where you'll be lying and one at foot level. really nice to hug to your chest if it's super cold as you fall asleep.

we've had limited success with our electric blanket though i know some here swear by them but i do know all of the above tricks have worked very well for us. as mentioned above, i work from home, i also home educate so we both use our computers all day. we also have storage heating so it's all electric here yet even including the harsh 2010 winter our electric bill averages to just £43 month, that's it all in for everything. average temp in here is about 18C room temp in living spaces and 16-17C in bedroom (we like it cool) because we keep ourselves warm we don't have to heat the house as much.

i of course do a lot of winter prepping to keep the house well insulated but localised heating is so much more efficient and less costly. being in a cottage you may need to do some things differently but i promise you localised heating will always be cheaper so as long as you can keep the house warm enough to keep damp from setting in you should be ok. and having lived in old stone crofts up in the scottish islands i will say, make sure you get the house warm at least 1/2 hour BEFORE the sun goes down, be it fire or radiators, nights where i failed to do this in the old stone crofts i found i just couldn't seem to get warm.

Confuzzled

ScattySkewbald wrote: »

Been lurking for a little while now - you guys are all so organised!!! Just thought I'd mention I'd brought a couple of the Ikea fleeces off ebay for about £2.80 and free p&p. My local Ikea has been out of stock for months and although there a little more expensive, the extra wouldn't even cover my diesel to get there (plus it stops me spending even more once I'm there lol!)
Hope that helps someone

you make a good point there. i'm not pointing fingers at anyone, i know most of the people in this forum are very shrewd, however i must say i am constantly shocked reading over various forums and seeing 'oh i wouldn't dream of paying for delivery when i can just go pick it up' etc etc

however, these are often people that have said they have to travel x amount of miles into a town... always shocks me because you pay for petrol, parking and let's face it your time and likelihood of buying other stuff whilst you're there, it very often costs the same or LESS to pay postage!

now you do get the types that are very good and do all their running on one trip and i agree that's an excellent strategy and will be cheaper but most think nothing of popping into town for this and then in for that etc. maybe it's just because i gave up the car a long time ago or having lived on a scottish island and having to face higher prices all around it's just second nature for me to look at postage NOT as an extra charge but as part of the overall cost when i'm making my decision as to what a good deal is. regardless i seem to very often see short sightedness on this front so it's great that you make a point to tell us you considered that even if your postage was free anyway.

besides with winter coming you don't want to be out there less you have to be when it's nasty. again not having a go at anyone in here but just had to commend you for pointing out something i feel is far to often overlooked!