I sew rice into a polarfleece bag and place it in the microwave for a few minutes while I'm getting ready for bed. Once it is hot, I put it into the bed down towards the bottom.

It provides a warm pocket for my feet all night and I'm able to turn the thermostat down a little farther while I sleep because then my feet don't get cold!

We use the plastic wrap for our windows & door snakes for the doors! Thanks!

I bake a cake. The extra heat from the oven helps keep the place comfy and the cake ain't too bad either! ;)

I agree with the tip about snuggling...and on top of snuggling with my husband, when the cat curls up on the bed too it makes it even warmer!

we have a summer weight down comforter that we bought 15 years ago that enables us to keep the heat lower and not be too. cold. WE just bought insulating curtains for a few rooms so we'll see how that helps too.

Wear socks. Wear layers - and the first layer needs to be tighter. Go to bed with mittens on. :-)

I find that as it gets colder my dogs seem to curl up on the bed more, keeping it nice and toasty. I have one who loves to sleep near my feet!

I'm a gadget geek, so I have a digital thermostat. However when it gets cold, I reinstall my mechanical thermostat (the ones with the little bubbles of mercury inside).

When your furnace kicks on, it usually turns on both the heat pump and the emergency strips. When the emergency strips are turned on, THAT'S where you waste your money.

There are 2 ways to keep your strips from turning on:
1 - Only change your heat temperatures by 2-3 degrees at a time. That will keep your furnace from going into "emergency mode" and heating the strips.

2 - Do what I do and remove the faceplate from the thermostat and change the temperature so that ONLY ONE of the mercury bubbles touches the contact. If both bubbles touch then you're heating the strips.

Wood stove probuly saves us hundreds a year. Im in canada though so it gets pretty cold here. I also put alot of time in the fall presurving food , I do it for fun but there is a money saving side effect of not having to buy over priced jam when berrys grow for free here. Cheers

I'm surprised to see only a couple responses so far that include this really basic change: wear a sweater! (I like it cool, so sometimes I wear an old polyester fleece vest instead.)

In addition to keeping my feet warm, as several have noted, I sometimes wear a knit cap if I'm sitting for a while. It does quite a good job of keeping the heat in.

I wear a lot of sweaters and don't turn my heat up that high. I also like to spend time in other locations outside of my apartment (like a coffee shop or library) and "use" their heat. If I'm not at home, I won't notice that it's slightly chilly inside!

We play/relax/read in one room in the evenings in order to not waste electricity. We drink lots of hot drinks. We pile the blankets on beds so we can turn the thermostat down. When we use the oven, we crack the door when we turn it off so the heat escapes into the kitchen.

Living in MN if you were to wait for a really warm day in the winter to get outdoors, you would be inside for a long time! Plus, when that sun is shining off the snow there is nothing more beautiful, or peaceful to walk in! And snow shoveling is a great workout, not to mention raises the body temperature! So, with winter approaching get those skates sharpened, get the sleds ready or whatever other activity you enjoy and make the most of the long months ahead of us!

Our winters in S. Cal are mild - mostly we have to deal with the rain and damp. I DO have boots and umbrellas and rainwear - even if I wear them only briefly, it's worth it

I dress more warmly, put on sweatshirts and socks and pile on comforters. And I have found you can use candles as small radiant heaters in a pinch....

Now that we live in a place with a wood fireplace, we use this to keep warm on some colder evenings, instead of putting the heat up. We also wear lots of layers, many of them homemade.

Piles o' blankets. I'm a big nester in the winter.

Lots of home cooked meals using the oven during the winter. I mean, what says home for the holidays more than a warm house that smells like pot roast and chocolate chip cookies?

To reduce costs as much as possible, we shut off the vents in rooms that get little use, change ceiling fans to push warmer air down, add a layer of blankets to the bed so we can lower the temp at night. I also work from home...so we keep it lower during the day and I add a sweater to my outfit.

I find the best thing to do is bundle up. My younger sister is ALWAYS complaining about how cold it is, YET, she walks around in shorts & a t-shirt. I mean, come on. I wear shorts & a t-shirt as well, BUT that's underneath my sweater & long pants with long winter socks.

Definately to stay warmer we all use the slippers around the house and our sweaters. We also keep blankets on the couches to cover with in the evenings in front of the tv.

We're going to try something new this winter. We have several large windows w/ southern exposure. We're going to try filling some 2 liter bottles with water and leave them in the sun all day. We might try sand as well We're hoping that will store at least some heat for the evening, but we're not sure if it will retain it long enough to be useful. At the very least, it should cut down on the heating bill a little bit (very little bit?).

I use space heaters to heat the kids rooms, so I can keep the whole house cooler at night.

Oh, and blanket sleepers for the kids as well! You know, the footie pajamas.

This will be my first winter in a new-to-me house, so I am looking forward to see what the bills look like. I have one room that is just a guest room. I see lots of people who want to shut that room off, but the heating and air technician who worked on my mom's ac this summer said shutting the vents in that room can actually make her heat pump work harder, and therefore be less fuel-efficient. Do any other southerners know what I'm talking about?

I am going to add weatherstripping to my front door and see about rigging up a door snake to rest at the top of the front door. The door has about 1/4 inch of space in that corner - my landlord calls it character, and in a 90 year old house, I guess he's right. But weather stripping and a door snake should cut the amount of cold air that comes in through that door plenty.

I keep the temperature at 65 in my house all winter. If I end up going to a programmable thermostat, I'll lower it to 62 while I'm away, but if I don't I probably won't remember to make the change. My dogs will cuddle up if they are cold, and if I am cold, I add layers. One of my mutts doesn't have much of a coat, so she has some sweaters to wear, too.

For the bedroom, I have an electric heating pad that I can use to warm up the bed if it's especially chilly - I plug it in for about 20 minutes and then unplug it, because it's not safe to sleep with those things on. I also let the dogs in the bed if it's cool out - it's a win for all three of us. I also have a down comforter that I will add into the bedding. When it is really cold, I have a down throw and an extra comforter to layer on the bed. I don't usually need all of that, but if the power goes out and I'm without heat, I can do pretty well that way.

When it gets colder, into January and February, I have a small electric heater that I can set up in front of the couch. The mutt without a decent fur coat warms herself in front of it, but she is kind enough to share. A cup of hot tea or cocoa to warm the hands and the stomach helps a lot, too, and tea is a cheap indulgence.

In November, I'll shrink wrap all of the windows except for one in my bedroom (in case we get a warm spell, I like to be able to open a window in my bedroom), and one in the kitchen (for my inevitable cooking disasters), and one in the living room (the dogs look out this window and they tear off the shrink wrap). I'm also going to add another layer of fabric insulation, and by that I mean curtains, to the windows that currently only have blinds and sheers over them. They are all in rooms that don't see a lot of daily activity, but I think that adding a layer of fabric will still help hold the heat in.

Right now, the weather is so darn pleasant, I have windows open and the heat and air off! Ah, fall in the south, I love you!

We live in Klamath Falls, Oregon and usually get Nov-Dec-Jan snow and it gets very cold at night, starting in October. We put pink insulation cut-outs in the crawlspace vents to keep the pipes from freezing. We blow the water out of the sprinklers to keep the PVC from freezing. In winter, unused rooms (guest bathroom and bedroom) have the vents shut tight and a magnetic block over the vents and a 'snake' in front of the door to prevent heat from going into the rooms. I put the heavy curtains up with a protective backing that are wide open during the day to let in lots of light and warmth and closed tight at night to keep it in! We stay cozy with the heat at 66 during the day for the Yorkies (well, the dogs get cold and so does the retired husband) and lots of polar fleece comforters on the leather couches. We keep the heat at 61 at night. The oven and dryer in the laundry room and sometimes the natural gas fireplace keeps the living areas plenty warm when we are home in the evenings! We have electric blankets on the beds, so we stay toasty warm with minimal heat use. (and we get to sleep naked- sorry,not gross, just a life long 30 year habit with us as old married people) We also have a cup of hot tea (sometimes with a shot of brandy) for a nightcap and always hit the jacuzzi before bed on a very cold night.
Our gas and electric bills are VERY low during the winter compared to a lot of our friends! And we are comfortable without wearing parkas, socks to bed or heavy sweaters in the house.

The best thing I do to keep comfy during the winter is to use the two thick Polartec blankets I bought from LL Bean years ago. I remove the sheets on the bed for the winter and use one of the blankets as a fitted sheet and the other one as my blanket. They keep me toasty warm without overheating like a down comforter can do. Plus the fact that the bed is warm from the moment you get into it is worth anything!

I've found that the window kits that are supposed to insulate your windows are expensive and the plastic is too thin to do much of anything. Several years ago, I bought ten of those thick clear plastic shower curtains for about a buck apiece at the Dollar Tree. I use nails or thumbtacks to fasten them to the outside of my window frames, which cuts down on air coming in through the windows as well as through gaps in the window frames. since they're clear I can still get lots of light in the house, and since they aren't taped or shrink wrapped onto the windows I can take them down and re-use them the next year.
I also have two pairs of those rubber backed curtains from the 1950's that i found at a yard sale. They're ugly but the rubber backing will keep wind and cold air out really efficiently.
I live in an old leaky building, and mine is usually the warmest apartment out of the entire building!

We have a programmable thermostat so any time of the year it is set to run less during the day while we aren't there. During the winter my husband and I prefer to be under lots of covers as well so we can keep it fairly low. We close the doors and vents of rooms we aren't using so we are not heating the extra square footage (guest room, guest bathroom, etc). In the summer we close most of the vents downstairs to force the cold air upstairs where it will then sink. In the winter we do the opposite and it seems to help the house maintain a more consistant temperature. And finally I love to where my Duofold shirts and pants around the house in the winter. They aren't bulky but they provide extra warmth. In the end though if I am truly cold I allow myself to turn up the heat because it is not worth being miserable!

I live alone, so I am ok with setting the thermostat at 60 and wearing a hat around the house. I also morph into the pilsbury doughkid during the winter (hey, extra adipose=insulation, right? just kidding) in terms of LAYERS. As previous commenter said, wear the first layer close to the skin and you will be toasty warm. The only thing I hate doing is wearing lots of socks because I feel like my feet are getting all sweaty and smelly- but then if I leave off socks they get cold. Bah!

Either paint the bottles black or mix food coloring for the darkest color you can make into the water. This will help the bottles absorb heat more efficiently. Sand actually might be a good choice too in a black bottle.

With all due respect econobiker...
Comment 59:
Venting your dryer into your home is a terrible idea.
The increased humidity with almost certainly cause mold.
It will raise the relative humidity too much.
If you rent you may not care but be warned!

Living in NYC can be expensive, but a silver lining is that often heat and hot water are included in rent. I've fallen in love with the old steam radiators since moving here because they're super warm and the hiss of the steam provides nice white noise to sleep to.

When I paid for my own heat, I would seal up the apartment as much as possible an pile on the layers and blankets. A really good pair of slippers and thermal tops and long undies can make all the difference.

We flip the switch on our ceiling fans. In the winter they should turn clockwise (looking up at them). We run them on low to redistribute the warm air that rises.

Don't forget that heat rises: have your ceiling fans push the heat down. We have a small heater in the crawl space (which is insulated) that radiates heat into the kitchen; we also us passive solar by opening the windows when the sun is bright: I have snuggled with my son during Saterday morning on a dark blanket and enjoy the sunshine.
We are lucky enough to have a dual heating system: heat pump and propane: there is a switch that will automatic change the system to the propane system when the temp drops below 30 (ours set at 20) heat pumps don't work when its freezing outside. If you can't find the switch then use the emergency setting on the programable thermostat. I also lower my temp in the house when we are gone: with the heater under the house the flooring is safe to lower temp to 62 while we are gone and then again its lowered to 64 at night.
Dont forget to ensure there is no leaves or shrubs around the heat pump: it don't like company and works better alone: also ensure that all filters are changed at least every 3 months this will help the system to not work so hard.

Also in Minnesota...and they're predicting snow for this Saturday!

This year:
* We will be caulking the windows and doors this weekend.
* We've got the thermostat set to 65 during the day and 62 at night.
* We wear long sleeve shirts/sweaters and socks, and use lots of blankets.

In Planning:
* We're saving up to insulate the attic and basement better next year.
* We're also saving up to get better windows in a few years. We currently have single pane with storm windows.

Toby's post just cracks me up, from the flammable stuff to the nothing but the hat bit.