Warm Sweater Wednesday

It's been a month ago that I first posted here about WSW. We've done just so-so with Warm Sweater Wednesday the past few weeks. It was so cold and windy that we just couldn't turn down the heat. However, I didn't turn it up, either.

Last week was New Year's Eve, and no one was home all day, so the thermostat stayed set at 63 degrees. This is the normal setting for during the day, in case I don't come home right after I get off work at 8 a.m. When I get home, I usually turn it up to 68.

Today I did not. It's pretty chilly outside, in the 30's, and snowing off and on, but I left the thermostat at 63. When I first got home, I cleaned up the kitchen, then went to bed - remnants of a migraine only gave me 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night so a nap was badly needed. The bed was warm and cozy and I didn't even notice the cooler temp in the house.

I've been up for a few hours now, and am baking cookies and wearing layers, so I'm really quite comfortable. I think I'll just leave the setting at 63 until the thermostat changes itself to 68 at 4:00 or so.

You may have surmised that we have a programmable thermostat. This has been the biggest money-saver in the winter! It is programmed for 63 during the day, unless I change it, then 68 for the evening. At 11:00 it goes down to 60 for the night. (We have a dual-control heated mattress pad, so we stay toasty warm, don't worry.) At 3:30 it goes back up to 68 - I get up at 4, so the house is at least beginning to warm up then. Greg leaves for work a little before 7, so that's when it goes back down to 63.

Now I've had people mention to me that letting the house and furniture get cold overnight takes so much more heat to warm it up in the morning, that it cancels out any savings we might have by turning the furnace down at night. I beg to differ. A few years ago the gas man was here to hook up the new gas cook stove and he mentioned that we had the lowest gas bill in our entire town. Granted, that's just over 100 houses, but that's fairly significant. I can't say it's true today, but it proved to me that what we were doing was working.