We use one woodstove as our main source of heat. Our house is an old farmhouse with an original small square footprint that has had several rooms added onto it over the years. The heat from the woodstove can't reach these rooms and so we did invest in a heat pump system two years ago when the little babe was born. But on severely cold days (below 10 degrees or so), the heat pump just can't handle it and so our house is cold. The warmest room is of course the woodstove room, then the bathroom only because we have a space heater going almost non-stop because there isn't any other heat in there. The kitchen was 47 degrees F on Monday morning and the office and cat room were colder than that.
-Ice on the inside of the windows - not just at 7am, but throughout the whole day. And not just on the old farmhouse windows, but also on the new insulated front door window.
-Clear liquid dish soap turning thick and opaque.
-A special treat for the ladies outside - hot pasta, along with the regular compost scraps.
-Coming downstairs and seeing my husband looking like he is making coffee and eggs over a chilly early morning campfire instead of in our kitchen.
-Donning my own cold weather uniform for a chilly day inside - hat, scarf, two shirts, hooded sweatshirt, tights, socks, fleece pants, wool slippers. I had to add another pair of fleece socks mid-morning.
-Cats choosing to remain by the space heater in the bathroom instead of eating breakfast - even missing the wet food!
-All five dogs gathered in the woodstove room, ignoring the rules about personal space.
-And of course the little babe - no hat, her feet only covered because she can't pull off her tights, and claiming that she is not cold.
So what do you think? Are we adults cold because we think we should be cold? If the weather experts didn't loudly announce that it was going to be "bitterly Arctic cold, blah, blah, blah" would we mind it and brace for it as much as we do? I'm not saying we wouldn't. It only took 15 minutes of skiing on Sunday morning for us to determine that zero degrees fahrenheit is our limit. We're okay at 9 degrees. We're just too darn cold at -9 degrees. Though I think it is good to feel the discomfort - it makes us appreciate the comfort that we are lucky to have.
I shared this post on The Self Sufficient HomeAcre for The HomeAcre Hop.