When we use our wood stove to heat our small house, it is warm enough that I usually just wear t-shirts around the house. We keep the wood in our John Deere gator right at our back door so all I have to do is step out take two short steps and grab the logs. Well, since I have bare arms, it poses a problem; the logs are hard on them and I don't want to take the time to slip on a coat.
To save getting scratched, I keep the sleeve of an old sweatshirt beside the door, it is quick to slip over my arm as I step out to grab an armful of wood. We don't like to store more than a couple of extra logs inside because I am very allergic to bug bites. We have one of those carriers but with our small house we feel it works better for us to bring in a couple at a time.
Using the wood stove saves us right at $100 a month and using the dead wood helps clean old trees up, making room for new growth. The man we get our wood from is retired and what little he makes selling us wood helps him makes ends meet, so we are glad for that. What we can save on our nation's energy helps us all.
By Ann Winberg from Loup City, NE
This page contains the following solutions.
To make your house smell great, save all your citrus peels and dry them. They can be used for kindling in your fireplace.
All my life, I have lived in a home where the heat was supplemented by a fireplace. Typically, fireplaces have a bad rap of letting more heat out than they produce, but there are a few ways to offset that.
Toss dried orange, lemon, or lime rinds onto your fire for a fresh, pleasant smell in your house.
While logs are burning, throw salt on them from time to time. This reduces the soot, making clean-up that much easier.
If you run out of fireplace matches, long matches that are useful or starting fires or lighting pilot lights, use a long piece of spaghetti. Just light the spaghetti and use it as a match.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
Tips for using a fireplace to heat your home, safely. Post your ideas.
Do not burn colored newspaper or magazines in your fireplace! They contain lead and when burned will emit dangerous levels of the lead. This can be extremely harmful especially to children!
By MrsMoted2
