It’s already MARCH 1ST!! Can you believe it? Spring starts this month! Okay. I’m ready to do a happy dance over that one, though if the precedent holds true, we’ll have snow at least a couple of times in April around here, but that doesn’t stop a girl from dreaming!
Last year, we went right from snow – at the end of April to 80’s by the second week in May. We just skipped spring and headed right into Summer, and fortunately or unfortunately – depending on your outlook, summer is just around the corner.
Summer – you know – summer! Summer, the time of swimming pools, tans, porch swings, baseball, lemonade, and HEAT. Because of issues with our grossly disfigured budget billing for our gas and electric bills, we have been paying $342/month for the two utilities combined. Needless to say, this summer we will not be keeping the AC at sixty-eight degrees.
So in the spirit of learning how to keep me and my home cool this summer, I’ve done a bit of research and digging. This also goes along with the Prepper Kits that we discussed starting several months ago. One of the kits mentioned is a cooling kit. When we put this kit together, it should help you cool your house as well as yourself!
So what should you add to your Cooling Kit:
Vitamin C 
Studies have been done which show that vitamin C taken when the air temperature gets hot allows your body to stay cooler because as you sweat, eventually (believe it or not) your sweat glands get fatigued. Taking vitamin C delays this fatigue! This allows your sweat glands to work better and more efficiently. Vitamin C has also been shown to mitigate prickly heat – a rash which is caused by heat and excessive sweat getting trapped next to the skin.
Cotton Sheets
What do you normally sleep on? In the wintertime, do you use flannel sheets? Well in the summer, you’ll want to make sure that you have 100% cotton sheets. Whether you keep these in your cooling kit or you just make sure that you keep them with your other sheets, make sure that you have 100% cotton sheets because they will help you stay cooler.
Misting Bottles
Misting bottles can be used during the day to spritz yourself with but at night, you can also spritz your sheets before you go to bed in hopes of keeping you cooler.
Buckwheat pillows
Why buckwheat pillows? I can see your raised eyebrows over that one. Did you know that because of the structure of buckwheat it creates a lot of air pockets that allow air to circulate (even with a pillowcase on) so the air circulation will keep you cooler!
Peppermint tea 
Peppermint is cooling. Make some peppermint sun tea, to help you cool off. While it would be so much better with ice, Ice or not, peppermint tea will help cool your body off.
Peppermint essential oil
Like peppermint tea, peppermint is actually able to lower your body temperature and help you not feel as warm, because peppermint essential oil actually lowers your body temperature. As a side note, I even use peppermint essential oil on fevers to lower them.
Wide Brimmed hats
If you’re going to be working out in the sun, having a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off your head is essential. When the sun hits your head directly, it will heat your entire body up which can cause heat stroke. Having a hat that keeps the sun away from the top of your head and your face will be a huge help in keeping you cool.
Frogg Togg Cooling Towels
I LOVE my Frogg Togg cooling towel! It’s a foam-like feeling sheet that when you get warm, you wet it and the temperature of the sheet will drop by 30 degrees in a matter of seconds. Put the now cool towel around you neck and it makes all the difference in the world!
Last summer we went to see Annie at the Muny in St. Louis in JULY! It was H-O-T, and we were all pretty much drenched in sweat. I realized that I had two Frogg Togg cooling towels with us. We pulled them out and wet them down with some water from a bottle of water. In no time, with them wrapped around our necks, we felt drastically cooler. It really was amazing!
Battery Powered Fans 
I have found two battery-powered fans that I can highly recommend. Here is a ten-inch fan that can either be run by AC or with D cell batteries. It can cover a little larger of an area than the other fan that I found. Two of these put side-by-side in an open window would work wonders to move air around and through a house. I have also found a five-inch fan that works well as a personal fan, but not much for cooling much of a house.
Tips and Tricks to Cool Yourself and Your House
We’ve already gone through items that you should set aside in your cooling Kit for ways that you can help during the summer months. With my personal experience as well as the research that I’ve done, here are some suggestions for keeping your house cool that don’t require you to put anything into a kit, but ideas that will help you keep your home cool.
Get rid of any incandescent bulbs
Hopefully, you’ve been systematically changing out incandescent lights for LED lights. Not only will that lower your electric bill, but it will also keep the heat given off by your lights down. Incandescent lights give off a lot of energy not only in the form of light but also in the form of heat. Do you remember those EZ-Bake ovens that were all the rage when I was young – yes, I just dated myself? The heat source for that oven was an incandescent light bulb. You actually baked a mini cake with the heat from a light bulb!
Blackout Curtains
While blackout curtains are wonderful – and they are especially nice on early summer mornings – they are also wonderful at keeping HEAT out. If you keep blackout curtains pulled when the sun is shining directly on those windows, it will help block the heat out.
Ceiling Fans 
Whether it’s summer or it’s winter, the direction of your fan can actually help or hinder your cause. During the summer you should set your ceiling fans to rotate counterclockwise.
Cook Outside
It used to be that women had outdoor kitchens to use for the summer months for the precise reason that they didn’t want to heat up their houses. Maybe we should take a page out of their book and cook outside. Cook over a fire or in an outdoor oven or use a grill. Find creative ways to cook outside.
House Plants
Besides being amazing at cleaning the air in a house, houseplants also help control the humidity in a room and because of this they keep it cooler. How COOL (pun-so-intended) is that!
Eat Foods That Are Full of Water
If you are dehydrated, you will overheat quickly. Foods that are full of water will help keep you cooler because you are providing your body with more water than it will be able to use to create sweat. Some of these are watermelon (92% water content), strawberries (91% water content), cantaloupe (90% water content), peaches (89% water content), and oranges (88% water content).
Meditation and cooling 
yoga breathing
This was so cool when I discovered it. I’ve recently been introduced to yoga, and while there’s a lot I can’t do without big modifications, I’ve discovered how much I love it. But yoga actually has a way to cool your body through breathing. It’s called Pranayama, and even I can do this without modification.
Wear white clothes or pastels
White and light colors reflect light and heat. Wearing these colors will help to keep your body cooler overall.
Hay Time Switchel
When we were studying early American history one of the books that we used mentioned a really refreshing drink that the colonists used to cool themselves while they were cutting and bundling hay – a HOT, hard job. This drink was called Hay Time Switchel. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has a recipe for this. You can find it here. This is their recipe:
- 1 gallon water
- 1 1/2 C molasses
- 1/3 C apple cider vinegar
- 1 T freshly grated ginger
Mix together, add ice if you have it and enjoy! What About You? Do you have any other ideas on how to keep your temperature down or to keep your house cooler? Please share them with us in the comments below so that we can all be better prepared.
Together let’s Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome
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get your hair wet, as the water evaporates it cools your head. I bought a 12 volt li ion battery, model d-12480 it is the size of a pack of cigarettes but will run a 12 volt trucker fan for 6 hours on high, these are rechargeable ( 3 hours) many many times. couple the 2 together and you can stay pretty comfortable
p.s. if you have a basement it is cooler down there
Good article & good info from t i m about fans. A cool footbath is wonderful, especially with a little of that peppermint oil in it. We have A/C but I really try not to use it much. Trouble is, we live in a desert. Outdoor cooking is a must & especially canning!