Saving Money with My Fireplace

At a time when everyone is doing there best to bear down for the winter, and prepare for those not so kind gas bills to start rolling in I do the exact opposite. I may prepare to bear down for the winter but those gas bills are not an issue that I contend with in the winter. I shut the gas off to my entire house and start enjoying the comforts of my fireplace. To some I may seem a bit off of my rocker but, you will not find me in the middle of winter trying to decide if I need heat or food more. You see, when it is time to start firing up the fireplace, I go into major conserve mode. My fireplace is the heart of all I do in my house.

To start off with, I heat my house with my fireplace, which saves me a ton in gas. But, I even go further than that. I keep a canning pot full of water on my fireplace so that I always have dish water or warm water to wash with, I install clothesline within the vicinity of my fireplace, this not only saves me on the gas I use to run a dryer but, it also allows me to keep moisture in the air. I get all of my cast iron dishes out and every meal that I create gets done either on the top of my fireplace or I cook it on the inside just like it was a gas oven. And once again, when it comes to bath time, I get my hot water from my fireplace. I even use the ashes from my fireplace to ‘salt’ my sidewalk and driveway. It is a lot cheaper than putting down salt that will lead to the eroding of my sidewalks and driveway. For some people this may sound like a lot of hard work, but I figure that I work hard for my money and I deserve to get to use more of it for my own desires, not to make the oil companies even richer. Not only that, if my mind serves me right, is this not the way many of our ancestors survived for many a winter.

When a lot of people are dreading the following winter months, I am sitting back counting the days until my fireplace becomes the center of my family’s existence. It may seem like a lot of hard work to some, but to me it is my own little way of getting back at ‘the man’. Besides it also allows me to get the much needed exercise we all seem to lack when the winter months come around. If you have a fireplace, try out my techniques, for just one week and see if there is not a difference in your utility bills.