Texas Winter 101

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and was blessed with many family members around your tree. This was the first year that we have not had all of our children under our roof for Christmas. It was hard on this momma. I held it together until late yesterday and then I fell apart but I survived. The hazards of having children grow up and get married. But on with the post...

As I have posted before we moved from the east coast to the northern most part of Texas and well I am getting a lesson in Texas winters. We are currently renting an OLD house so you can imagine the old single pane windows and lack of insulation that I am dealing with. I have turned old towels and worn out sheets into draft stoppers and winterized as much as I thought possible. We had covered the windows with plastic sheeting and it helped but half of my living room is windows BIG windows one is 72x120, it literally is one wall of glass. The other window is 54x48 – a half wall of glass. I could not get the living room warm enough to spend any amount of time in there without overheating the rest of the house. So I went searching for suggestions. 

Now understand I was in a race against time. The weatherman had issued warnings for winter storms and snow. As it turned out Christmas day was a whopping 7*F and snowing; we had about 3-4 inches of white powder snow. I am not use to powder snow where I am from it is 3 inches of ice covered in 1 inch of snow.

One of the suggestions I found was to use plastic shower curtains behind your curtains. I originally had turned sheets into curtains because I could not find any regular curtains big enough to cover the window. So I took them down put up plastic shower curtains and turned flannel blankets into curtains for the big window and then used king sized towels for the other window. I wanted short curtains for that wall and I couldn’t find 3 full size blankets to match. I was surprised at how well the shower curtains helped even with the plastic already over the windows. We were actually able to sit in the living room with the heat only on 70 and be comfortable. 

I am still searching for more winterizing tips because it is JUST December and I have been told that spring doesn’t come around here until May…hummm five more months of winter…yep this southern girl is gonna freeze her tushy off. I don’t think I have enough clothes to survive many more days of 7*F.

What do you do to winterize your home?