Fall, or some people call it autumn, is a season loved by all. Reddish leaves with melancholic sky makes us suddenly become poets to appreciate the beauty. ‘Pumpkin spice’ foods and beverages are trending again, and in this season mother nature is showing its mature beauty.
Beyond our perspectives, autumn is a special season for the nature itself. Small cute creatures are in a hurry to collect food and mushrooms are thriving everywhere. Birds like swallows, swifts and cuckoos are migrating to warmer places but their presence up there shows us the peacefulness of the season.
But what have been mentioned above are not the only thing that will remind you of fall season. At this time of the year, the temperature is starting to get colder and colder. Sure, after enjoying all those melancholies in the afternoon, we need to warm ourselves.
Warming ourselves is indeed easy. We just need to turn up the thermostat. But that’s not eco-friendly, and here in this article we want to show you how to make yourself warm in this season, without harming our environment.
Start From Your Body
In this article, we are going to completely ignore the presence of thermostats. Whether you use it or not in your home, we just don’t care. We just want to show you the way to make yourself warm without even changing the temperature of your thermostats neither up, nor down.
If you feel cold, then the first step is you have to start to rise your body temperature. You feeling cold means you have not adapt yourself to the temperature. Warming your body temperature will help you to feel more comfortable and give you more time to adapt to outside temperature.
For your information, it is far easier to change your body temperature than changing the room temperature. Wear layers of clothing and drink warm beverages. If you love spicy foods, take some spicy foods too. This way, the temperature of your body will increase from the inside out.
But try to avoid drinking alcohol in cold temperature. Alcohol will only make you feel warm on the inside, while in fact it makes your body temperature drop a little bit. Ginger is way better than alcohol, because the burning sensation it gives is not fake since it comes from a compound called gingerol.
You might also want to try doing some daily chores, like vacuuming or rearranging you room. The calories you burn from doing such activities will be converted to heat and eventually make you feel warmer too. Well, stay slim and warm.
Dress Up The Windows
Still feeling cold this autumn? Then maybe the problem comes from your ventilations. Well-isolated homes will be able to retain its temperature even in the coldest nights of winter. Try to check for gaps in the windows which may let cold wind from outside to slip through into your house.
This technique is already applied in passive houses, where ventilation and isolation are arranged in such way that the temperature in the house is more stable than conventional housings. We have written a full article about this topic that you can check out later.
To make your home warmer, you can also ‘dress up’ your windows with heavy curtains like wool or fleece drapes. Just like how we dress in autumn, we would prefer warm clothes to tank tops. It can not only retain heat, but also able to prevent the slightest chance of wind to get through.
This way, cold temperature from the outside, whether it comes from wind or temperature conduction would have to get through more isolation. However, the curtain should only be closed tight when the air outside is cold. When the day is warm, make sure to open it up to let warmer air in.
If you arrange your house in such way that sunlight can penetrate during the day through your windows, you should try to heat up your houses with the heat from the sun. If the air is too cold during the day, just open the curtains without opening the windows.
Go To The Kitchen This Autumn
Another way to warm yourself during the cold weather in this autumn is by going to the kitchen to cook or do some chores. This way, you can kill two birds with just one stone: warming yourself up and do something productive during the weather.
This is not a joke. Cooking is actually a suggested activity that you can literally do to make yourself warm during autumn. The heat from the stove and oven would spread and warm your surroundings up. In addition to that, it needs energy to make some food.
As we mentioned above, eating makes your body warm too. Not only that, the leftovers or any kinds of food waste you produce from such activity can also be processed into compost, and composting will make your house warmer too.
Microbial breakdown of organic materials during composting process produces heat. The heat is enough for some people to use it for controlling the temperature in their greenhouses, even some also use it to warm their shower up.
Copy The Inuits
What if none of those methods mentioned above don’t work out? is there anything else we can do? In that case, maybe you should go out and exercise. What? Yes, go do some exercises and warm yourself up from the inside.
Inuit people exercise to make themselves warm during the day by hunting, building shelters, and during qimutsiq (dog-team) travel. Thus, this is the method that you might want to try too. Wear cotton sweatpants and sport sweater or sweatshirt, and jog around the neighborhood.
Make sure to also cover your head with something warm, because any exposed skin will only be the spot where your body heat escapes. If you somehow manage to be able to find a way to exercise indoor, that’s a good idea too.
The point is, just try to exercise anytime you feel the temperature is too cold for you to do other things mentioned above.
Still feeling cold? Invite some friends for a tea party and eat the food you have made with them. You will appreciate additional body heat in your house. Furthermore, friends can not only make the room warmer but also your heart too, right?
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