Today the morning brought the first frost to render frozen both our noses and our cars. It’s time for flannel sheets and down jackets. Flannel sheets let you stay asleep when you roll around at night and down jackets keep you warm running outside to turn on your car so you won’t have to drive looking through the equivalent of wax paper. I tried it this morning and it’s dangerous.
When the temperatures drop and the wind kicks up, it’s really nice to be warm in your house. Heat. In the biting and windy cold, heat is a kind mother enveloping you, reassuring you everything will be okay. You stop shivering and clenching every muscle in your body and relax and feel calm. Heat takes your toes from feeling like icicles to being pigs again. Heat turns your hurting fingers into useful digits. But how do you stay warm AND not blow the Christmas Gift Budget keeping your fingers limber enough to tie ribbons?
There are ways.
Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are coming up and many of us hope to bless our friends and families with special gifts. You could give them the gift of heat but, unfortunately, your generosity would escape them as they peered into the empty box.
So, what are some ways we keep warm and our cash cold?
Layers. Wearing layers lets you customize your temperature with your activity. Layering really is just wearing one shirt or sweater on top of another. Since your activity at home varies, you can easily remove a layer as needed and then add it back as needed.
Move. Have you read the latest: being sedentary is the new smoking! Staying sedentary is really bad – for you and for me. Add some momentum to your vacuuming or do some lunges or jumping jacks while you wait for your laptop to warm up. You can do squats while you are folding the laundry. Get creative!
Rollers. These are amazing. The ones we have are called a Tiger Tail and we bought them in a two pack at Costco. You roll and massage these over your muscles and you will be amazed how your suddenly feel warm. Use these when you have to be more sedentary. Like moving, they get the blood flowing which is what is keeping you warmer!
Talking about staying warm made me think about all the different fabrics we can wear to stay warm so I thought I’d share what I found.
Fur. This fabric goes back to our ancestors when they didn’t have insulation between them and the inside of their home. It kept people alive in the snowy months. Today many people do not