Ways to Cool Down Your Home and Yourself This Summer

Keep cool this summer without increasing your electric bill

1. Switch to CFL bulbs for environmental and economic reasons, as well as to stay cool. Incandescent bulbs waste about 90% of their energy through the heat they emit.
2. Swap your sheets. Not only does seasonally switching your bedding freshen up a room, it’s also a great way to keep cool. While textiles like flannel sheets and fleece blankets are fantastic for insulation, cotton is much better during this time of year, as it breathes and stays cooler.
3. Try a buckwheat pillow at bedtime to keep your head cool. It won’t absorb and retain heat like cotton and down pillows.
4. DIY AC: Place a big bowl of ice water in front of a fan for a cheap alternative to central air.
5. Close your window blinds or curtains during the day, particularly if you are out of the house, to prevent your home from heating up like a greenhouse.
6. Cook outside on the grill to prevent heating up your home with a stove or oven. It also minimizes time you must spend cleaning up later.
7. Open internal doors at night to maximize any fresh, cool breezes that blow in.
8. For the summer, set your ceiling fan to rotate in a counterclockwise direction to create a cooling, downward airflow. In winter, turn the setting back to clockwise to recirculate warm air.
9. Use your bathroom fan when you shower and your exhaust fan when using your stovetop. They’ll help draw the hot air up and out of the room.
10. Unplug electronics. Electronics emit heat when plugged in, even if they’re turned off! Unplug them, or use a smart power strip, when they’re not in use.
11. Focus on the temperature in your body, not the house. If your ancestors survived without air conditioning, so can you. From being smart about your clothing choices, sipping tasty iced drinks to applying a cold cloth to strong-pulsed areas like your neck and wrists, cooling yourself from the inside out is not a bad idea. Also try keeping a bowl of cool water by your bed and dipping your feet if you feel warm in the middle of the night.
12. Make a few long-term improvements. If you’re really committed to the whole no-AC thing, you can make some changes to your home that will keep it cooler for seasons to come. Insulated window films are a smart purchase, as they work similarly to blinds. And additions like awnings and planting trees or vines near light-facing windows will shield your home from the sun’s rays, reduce the amount of heat your home absorbs and make your investment even more worthwhile.
13. Do chores at night. Laundry machines create a lot of heat. The washer is running hot water and dryers are obviously using heated air which inevitably radiates out from the machine. Do laundry at night to ensure that it’s not heating your home during the hottest parts of the day. Regularly clean your dryer vent for a quicker cycle.
14. Run your dishwasher at night to minimize the heating effect. If you have a quiet model, start it before you go to bed and wake up to clean dishes.

Keep Yourself Cool

Temperature maintenance is ultimately about keeping the person cool, not necessarily the house. While in cool months you can put on more clothes and blankets, you can only take off so many clothes during hot summer days. These tips can help to lower your temperature or make you feel cooler:

1. Stay hydrated and drink lots of clean water, nature’s “air conditioner.” Divide your body weight in half. This is about how many ounces of water you should drink each day to stay hydrated. Physical activity and warm weather may require you to drink more.
2. Eat plenty of watery, juicy fruits and vegetables each day (watermelon, honeydew, pineapple, berries, citrus fruits, squash, tomatoes, broccoli, green leafy vegetables, etc.).
3. Wear loose, lightweight, breathable cotton clothing.
4. Sleep on the lowest floor when possible. If you have a basement, take up residence there. The ground floor of a multi-story home is another good option. Heat rises and cool air sinks, so go where the cool air is.
5. Use cotton bedsheets. They’re lightweight and breathable. Specialty wicking sheets and other various fabric blends designed to keep you cool may help.
6. Keep ceiling fans on at night. Make sure your fan is rotating counter-clockwise (that is, not on the winter setting), and feel free to run it on high settings. While fans don’t lower the temperature of the room, they help you feel cooler, since air moving over skin evaporates sweat and pulls heat away from your body. A fan moving at just 2mph will make you feel 3-4 degrees cooler and at high speed many fans can hit 5mph!
7. Unplug any electronics not in use, in order to reduce heat (and energy loss) in your home.
8. Create an ice fan. Fill a large mixing bowl with ice and place it in front of a large box fan. While only effective for a small area of space, you’ll still get a nice, chilled breeze.
9. Place a cool, damp cloth or ice pack to your pulse points (wrists, neck, elbows, ankles, behind knees, feet, etc.).
10. If you don’t have an ice pack, create one by placing rice inside a sock. Tie the sock and freeze it for at least an hour before using to cool yourself.
11. Take cold showers for all-over cooling!