Q&A | Thermostat Settings, Socks, Flour Storage, & Hair Products

I have a frugal question about house temperature as it starts to get colder. Where do you personally draw the line at comfort for thermostat setting, and are there any other considerations? (Like surely there’s a point where pipes would freeze. But I also wonder about pets, though my husband tells me they have fur for a reason LOL. All I know if I can put on a sweater but my cats Chai and Cashew can’t!) Right now heat is on my mind as it’s cold in the Midwest, but the same issue crops up when adjusting the AC in the summer!

I was just wondering if that’s something that’s changed over the years, your thermostat temp, as you’ve been writing about choosing frugality even when financial times are better. I’m sure there’s also an environmental component, to using less energy, as well.

-Andrea

For me personally, this has a lot to do with who is in my household. 😉

Zoe and I can handle cold a lot better than Lisey could (no one was surprised when she moved to Hawaii. Ha.), so I keep the heat set lower in the winter now that Lisey is living on a tropical island rather than in my house.

My heat is currently set at 67 degrees, which does feel a little on the chilly side to me.

But I don’t mind snuggling up under my blankets at night to keep warm, and I also don’t mind always wearing a hoodie, socks, and slippers in the house in the winter.

On the other hand, Zoe and I both hate being hot. HATE.

Also, my house has old windows that do not seal up tightly, and that seems to let in a fair amount of humidity. So my summer thermostat is usually around 74 degrees, a setting that would be considered rather indulgent by many. But if I set it any higher, the humidity levels get very uncomfortable, and humidity makes me crabby. 😉

I think the “right” answer to the thermostat question really depends on just how tight your budget is (if you don’t have the money, period, you might just have to sweat or shiver more than you’d like!), and also what really matters to you temperature-wise.

As I said, I am willing to be a little bit chilly, but my tolerance for heat-related suffering is way lower. So I will splurge more on air conditioning than I will on heat.

Also, as with every frugal decision, I think it’s kind to consider the people you live with. Just because I can tolerate the cold doesn’t mean other people can handle that (which is why my heat was set higher when Lisey lived here.)

If we want to be kind and frugal, we gotta resist the temptation to have frugality always be the highest priority goal; assuming we have the budget wiggle room, we can show love to our household members by loosening up on the temptation to turn the thermostat up or down, within reason*.

(*I would have said no if Lisey wanted the house at 80 degrees all winter. Hehe.)

Hi! I have a (hopefully easy) question — do you have a flour storage method you love? I regularly have multiple kinds going at once (right now it’s a 25-lb bag of regular King Arthur, plus the smaller-but-still-Costco-sized ones of bread and pizza flour, plus normal-sized ones of white whole wheat and rye). We tend to bake a lot (four growing kids at home!), so go through it fairly quickly but I’d still like to keep it fresh. We don’t have enough freezer space to be able to keep it all in there, though.

If you have favorite flour storage containers, I’d love to hear about them!

-Courtney

So, if you are worried about getting bugs in your flour, your best bet is to freeze your flour when you buy it. I’ve read many places that four days in the freezer is recommended; this kills any bug eggs that are in your flour and then you can keep it at room temp after that.

(Gross as it may be, when bugs turn up in your flour, it is because the eggs arrived in the package. So your best bet is to kill them in the freezer.)

I have a big five-gallon food-grade storage bucket that I keep flour in when I buy a big bag:

but for smaller kitchen use, I just have some plastic lidded containers that I refill from the larger bucket.

Since I have a grain grinder, I don’t store whole wheat flour; I just grind it as I need it.

But if I bought whole wheat flour and I didn’t go through it quickly, I’d store it in the freezer. Whole wheat flour has more oils in it than white flour does, and the oils can get rancid after a while at room temperature, especially in the summer.

And the same goes for rye flour if it’s whole rye.

Where are your compression socks from? They look like good ones and I have not had any luck finding some!

Thanks!! Lauren

I could not remember if I’d answered this question before or not, so just in case: these are the ones I bought (size S/M), and since they are the only ones I’ve ever had, I don’t really know if they are amazing compression socks.

I have no point of comparison!

But they do seem to help my calves not feel as tight and sore after a 12 hours shift on my feet.

Do you have any frugal recommendations for styling hair products I can use on my curly frizzy thick hair?

-Tammy

I am not the best person to answer this because I have very un-thick hair (BOO), but I know that when you go online to read curly hair recommendations, sometimes the products you come across are super expensive.

(Which also happens if you look for skin-care recommendations. Sheesh. Some of those little containers are wildly expensive!)

I am guessing your hair is high-porosity, which means it’s prone to being dry. My hair is low-porosity, which means it does not absorb oil very well; the oil my scalp produces just sits on the surface of my hair, which means I look greasy in a hurry.

You can tell if your hair is high or low porosity by placing a single hair in a cup of water. If it floats, it’s low porosity, and if it sinks, it’s high porosity.

Apologies if that picture grossed any of you out; I vaguely remember that someone was squicked out by seeing hair that is not on a person’s head.

Here’s some hair ON my head to clear your mind:

 

Knowing the porosity of your hair can help you narrow down the products out there for curly hair. As I understand it, high-porosity hair usually benefits from heavier, more oil-heavy products (which would make me look like a total greaseball. Ha.)

And hopefully the readers will have ideas for you.

Alrighty, people. Talk to us about your thermostat settings (or anything else in this post!