MyNewPlace Blog

Yesterday, we discussed an easy way to keep your apartment warm without cranking up the heat by using an insulating plastic film around windows. This is the best first step you can take to keep as much warmth inside your apartment without time consuming installations or risking irreparable damage.

The difference is pretty substantial, especially in older, drafty apartments where it often seems that it is warmer outside than inside. It can be rather disheartening to live in an apartment that retains less heat than the sidewalk and the tree right outside your window.

So, step number 2 in the do-it-yourself plan to keep your apartment warm is taking care of the more insidious draft sources, such as doorways as well as any exterior walls and the outlets on them.

First, make sure that your doorways are not letting in gusts of cold air by purchasing specialized “draft dodgers" or simply employing the use of some household items to block cold air. If you have a rug near your entrance, you can simply lift one end up and cover the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door, or use an old towel.

Second, check to see if your outlets are letting in cold air; this leak is often overlooked, but is easily remedied with some custom electric outlet sealers. All of your outlets, although they are quite useful when they provide electricity, are also just holes in the wall.

To seal up that leak, turn off the electricity from your circuit breaker, unscrew the outlet cover, fit the foam pad arount the dual sockets and screw your covers back on.

Pictured above is the actual sealer, not the outlet cover. As should be obvious, installation is pretty self-explanatory. The only caveats are making sure that you have cut off electricity before you start poking around an electrical socket with a screwdriver and checking to see that the foam pads are flame retardant.

These chores are not even that tedious. It requires one trip to the hardware store, about $25 dollars at the absolute maximum and maybe an hour of your spare time on the weekend. And, you'll be able to feel the effect almost immediately. In our apartment, we were able to feel the difference from simply placing a blanket over the front window.

Tomorrow, we'll go over the final step of keeping your apartment warm in the winter without spending a fortune on oil or electricity. We are just getting warmed up. Zing.

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