Ode to Warm

Being in the South, our house was made to accommodate letting as much cool air in as possible to make the insanely hot summers possible. Add the cracks and shifts that come with age and the fact that most everything in our house is original so 100+ years old, and it becomes a very drafty situation. Our house is a pier and beam home, which means it was built off of the ground to let the air circulate under the house and cool the floors. This in the wintertime is NOT fun. Our house is basically divided in half, the right for the living, dining and kitchen (as you can see in some pictures), and the left for the bedrooms. My office is at the very back of the house and goes across the width.

Our house also faces east, which means one side gets the morning light, and one side gets the evening light. The side that gets the morning light stays warm during the day, while the other side in the shade is cold. At night, that reverses. See, that's not that good coz our bedrooms are on the side that is cold at night and the thermostat is on the side that is warm. So while our dining room is warm, our bedroom is frigid. Or, at least to us Cajuns it is.

Enter my new best friend:

I bought this little heater as a business expense to keep in my office during the winter. See, my office is surrounded by windows; 5 - 2ft. wide by 4 ft. tall windows. That's a lot of windows. That's a lot of drafty windows. That's a lot of cold woman shivering in front of a Mac editing into the wee hours of the morning. This thing is AMAZING. It can warm up the back office that remains about 10-15 degrees cooler than the rest of the house up in less than 5 minutes. It's about 2 feet tall, so it's small and it's pretty cute. It is also ceramic, which means it is cool to the touch.

The top has a set of buttons that I can set to customize my warming needs. It has a thermostat that goes from 60-85, and once it reaches the temperature you set it at, it stops blowing. It oscillates, and you can set it on a timer. The default is 7 hours, meaning if you don't touch anything, it will only run that long. So if you forget to turn it off before leaving, it won't run all day. Otherwise, you can set it to 1, 2 or 4 hours.

This little heater is so fantastic, it has made the rounds all over the house. We put it in the bedroom to keep us warm at night. We have a huge master suite, so we sleep on one side and Audrey has a bed set up on the other. That way we're still co-sleeping, but we've all got our own space. It even goes into the living room during the morning hours to keep us warm while we play in there. If we go in the playroom, we don't have to worry coz that's on the side of the house that is warm during the day.

I absolutely LOVE this heater. I promise I'm not getting paid to write this and it is completely unsolicited. I wonder if I linked this to them if they'd send me a free one?

But, anyway, it's perfect because it allows me to keep the heater lower (reducing our energy bill) but still stay warm. Because it doesn't matter what the thermostat is set on, if it's windy and you have drafts coming in from the windows and the floors, it's going to be cold. It would be outrageous to replace the windows, and we've already put insulation on the bottom of the floor under the house, so we don't have THAT many options.

So if you're looking for a way to keep warm, keep the cost down, have a safe heater that won't burn your kids or pets and doesn't look that unappealing, get this. It's only about $40. I'd say it's worth its weight in gold.