I love the cooking outside idea for dinner. We were getting sick of having sandwiches for dinner, so my husband took our electric griddle outside and made some dinner on that. It sure beats heating up the house!

Here are some of the tricks our family uses. First, a bit of background. We are in the Houston (Texas) area and I work from home on the computer all day. My tower system really puts out a lot of heat and it can feel pretty miserable. During the day I keep the a/c turned up to 85°F and higher. At night, when the kids go to bed, we drop the temp to around 78. We have an all electric house with no shading in the back yard. The morning sun comes in through the front of the house (kitchen). The afternoon sun comes through the back of the house (living room, family room, and master bedroom). Add 97% humity and, like I said, the heat can get pretty miserable.

Yes, water helps. Cold watermelon or cantaloupe (either juiced or in chunks) reduce your internal temp as well. For us, keeping the blinds closed until the sun is no longer a factor (afternoon in the front, morning in the back) is a must.

Okay, here’s the weird one — but it works. Wet a washcloth and wet your face, arms, legs, back of the neck and sit where a fan can reach you. As the water evaporates your skin temperature drops. When I’m really hot I go up to faucet wet my arms and face until they practically drip and go stand by a fan — it quickly evaporates.

We schedule errands/appointments for mid-afternoon so we can use other people’s a/c for the hottest part of the day.

Crockpots help us keep the kitchen cooler. We have the kind where the base and the ceramic dish are not attached. In other words, it’s not one piece as some older models are. I fill the ceramic liner with food and then set it up outside using an outdoor rated extension cord. Add a salad, veggies, and a grain and dinner is done.

There are several other tips. I tried to hit the ones that we find pay off the fastest. One last thing I’d like to mention, and it almost goes without saying. I find I stay coolest in the summer in sleeveless shirts and shorts.

Hope the tips help. We really appreciate both your blogs.

We work out of the house and my dh’s office is in the basement. As is my ds’s bedroom. Our home is superbly insulated but needs more ventilation in the attic. As a result, in the summer the attic area gets really hot and the heat radiates through the ceiling into the bedroom level.

The upstairs is normally 20+ degrees hotter than the basement when the a/c is running. The best I can achieve with the a/c on is 61 in the basement, 76 on the main floor and 82 in the bedroom.

If I don’t run the a/c, the bedroom will be 88 (and humid) but I can’t justify the bills and the pain (literally, my dh is freezing while he works, it hurts to touch his skin because it is so cold after working in the basement for a few hours) in order to get only a few degree gain for sleeping. On the other hand, we can’t sleep in the basement (no room for an inflatable bed in the office or ds’s room) so we suffer at night.

I do everything you suggest plus:

1. if you have forced air heating, run the fan because it cycles the cooler air from the basement through the house

2. run the bathroom fans upstairs and block the cold air returns on the bedroom level. This exhausts the hot air and sucks the coolish air coming through the heat vents up to body level (and stops the coolish air from falling back into the basement through the cold air return.

Ideally we would just have a room a/c unit in our bedroom since that is the only spot on the house that really needs a/c but we just put in really great windows (our room faces north-west in Canada therefore heat loss is the number one issue for that room) and the windows can’t take an a/c unit.

My score on the game so far this year? Only 6 days.

Oh, and a warning for those without a/c in their car (ours is broken). I have the worst burn of my life on my arm after driving for 2 hours with the window down yesterday. Remember to at least cover up that one arm while driving.

One bit of advice about using the fans; my husband is an expert at cooling the house w/o the ac. Before you turn those fans INWARD, turn them OUTWARD; they will suck the hot air OUT of your house until the sun goes down. Then, turn them around to bring the cooler air in. It works beautifully, and cools the house more than just pushing the cool air in.

In college I challenged myself quite a bit to see HOW LOW I could keep my electric bill. In August, I got it down to $35 one month. Not bad for living in Texas!! I kept the a/c off and only ran fans. I need to re-challenge myself for the next month and see how much $$ I can save on electricity and apply it to our debt reduction. Thanks for the motivation!

that aside what does really help is closing all the blinds, makes the house dark and you need to spend a touch extra on electricity as you need to run a few lights but much cheaper than running the A/C.

I also enjoy finding game-like ways to spend money. It’s sort of fun to find new ways to use less electricity, heat, AC, etc.