Keeping Your Home Warm During Winter

Though we love the cozy parts of the winter, like bundling up inside next to a fire and sipping hot cocoa, no one likes dealing with a cold or drafty house all winter! There are a lot more options available to you to keep your winter home warm than just turning up the thermostat and hoping for the best. A lot of factors can influence how much cold air is getting into your home and how well your space retains heat. Besides cranking up the thermostat dial, here are a few more things you can do to stay warm this winter.

Tips and Tricks for Staying Warm

Swap Out Your Curtains

One of the most expensive mistakes you can make in wintertime is letting the valuable heat your furnace or fireplace has worked so hard to generate escape. Heat can float right out walls, windows, and doors even when they’re closed or well insulated. Now your furnace or fireplace has to work overtime to pump in heat that’s vanishing, which can get expensive fast.

Replacing your regular curtains with winter curtains creates a barrier between the cold weather outside and the environment inside. Winter curtains are made with an insulating material that’s designed to keep the heat in and block the chill that can easily creep in through the glass of your windows. Winter curtains are not only functional, but come in a variety of styles for you to choose from so that you can keep your home fashionable, as well!

Rearrange Your Furniture

It’s pretty likely that you don’t rearrange your furniture every winter. That’s because most of us have never even stopped to consider how our furniture might impact the way heat circulates throughout our homes. Surprisingly, your furniture can play an important part in keeping your home warm throughout winter!

Furniture can be an obstacle that hinders heat from reaching the colder areas of your home. Our instinct is to place couches, sofas, or other furniture right in front of the fireplace or near a heating vent so that we can fully enjoy the warmth while we sit there. We know you want to be cozy, but furniture like this can absorb the heat, preventing it from circulating throughout the rest of the house. When temperatures drop and especially when it’s well below freezing, try moving your large furniture away from the fireplace and heating vents to free the flow of heat, allowing it to circulate through your home unobstructed.

Keep Out Drafts

There’s truly nothing worse than getting a cold blast of air when you walk through a room, especially if you’ve managed to make the rest of the house warm and toasty! 

You can eliminate drafts by installing insulated windows, which will maintain your home’s temperature and lower your energy costs. However, we get that new windows might not be an option for everyone, so an easy alternative is creating your own draft stopper!

Draft stoppers can be made really quickly and often with items you already have on hand so that they don’t cost you anything. A draft stopper can be a rolled up cloth, towel, or blanket that you place at the base of doors and windows to keep the cold drafts out. If you’re feeling really crafty, there are tons of DIY options that can make this task fun and fashionable!

Invest in Proper Home Maintenance

While there are plenty of ways you can turn up the heat in your winter home on your own, proper maintenance is crucial to the longevity of your house. Below freezing temperatures can gradually wear down your home and make winter-related issues difficult to get a handle on. New homes are typically the warmest in the winter time. With the latest insulation and heating systems, invest in a new home for you and your family. Contact Legacy Homes today for more information about our new homes for sale in Huntsville and Madison, Alabama.

Your Winter Home Checklist

We hope these DIY tricks can really set you up for a warm and cozy winter! Here are just a few more things we recommend checking off your winter home maintenance list for maximum heat efficiency.

 1) Change or clean out your furnace filters – this ensures your furnace is functioning properly and at peak performance, lowering your overall heating costs

2) Leave indoor faucets on a slow drip – in extreme temperatures, leaving your faucets dripping hot water will keep your pipes from freezing 

3) Stock up on firewood – keep your firewood in a dry place so that it burns efficiently. It’s great to have a large stock of easily accessible firewood so that you don’t run out when you need it most.

 4) Check weather stripping – well maintained stripping will prevent leaks during bad weather.

 5) Clean your roof – buildup on your roof can cause expensive damage. Remove anything that adds unnecessary weight or burden to your roof like ice, snow, and other debris.

6) Properly store/maintain outdoor tools and furniture – You’ll want your snow shovels and blowers in a convenient place for when you need them. Everything else (like gardening tools) should be stored properly so that it is not damaged by the cold weather. This includes patio furniture, grills, and any other items you won’t be using until the weather warms up again!

Once you’ve done all of this, your final task is tracking down your best blanket, making your favorite hot beverage, and settling down to enjoy your warm and toasty home all winter!