Frugal Living
1. How to keep yourself warm in the winter
The easiest way to keep warm during the winter months is to wear a wind
breaker. Adding a wind breaker to your normal clothing will make
you a lot warmer (by maybe 5 to 10 degrees). It works because it
reduces the effect of wind chill and slows down the evaporation of
sweat.
You can purchase a wind breaker from your local discount chain store or
a Goodwill store. It will cost you $5 to $30 depending on the
store
and its
quality. If that's too expensive, you can make a cheap substitue
by using large-sized plastic shopping bags from your local
KMart/Walmart.
Find a bag that is 1 to 2 inches wider than your waist-line, then cut
open the bottom of the bag. You can put it on like a
t-shirt. You can make it inconspicious by wearing it underneath a
long sleeve shirt or fleece. If you don't have bags that are
wider than your waist-line, you can cut up the bag into sheets and sew
them onto a shirt or pants. If you don't want to sew the plastic
bags onto your clothing, you could also tape the plastic bags together
(preferably using something like packaging tape or duct tape) and wear
them like clothing.
![](pics/hm_windbreaker.gif)
If you can't keep your room warm at night, you can also sleep in your
wind breaker which will help retain your body heat. Plastic bags
are a
choking hazard for children, so you should exercise care when handling
it around them.
2. Keep yourself warm at home
If you cannot afford to heat your home
(especially with rising oil and natural gas prices), you can at least
keep yourself warm. You can buy a parabolic electric heater, which is
kind of shaped like a satellite dish and it directs its heat in one
direction. You plug these heaters into an electric plug like any
appliance, so you heat yourself with electric power instead of gas or
oil.
This thing will not heat up your room, but if you sit in front of it,
it will provide good heat. The are some problems to using a parabolic
heater though. One problem is that you should not put anything that can
easily catch on fire near the protective grille,
or it could start a fire. Another problem is that if you keep it on for
more than maybe 5-10 minutes at a time, it will begin overheat and the
power cord will get very warm and will eventually burn out and expose
the electrical wires in it. The later versions of these heaters should
automatically turn off when it becomes overheated (and come back on a
few minutes later), but you should check it out when you first use it
just to be sure. I know of two brands of electric parabolic
heaters, Presto and Holmes, though I think Holmes may have discontinued
its parabolic heater.
![Presto Heatdish](pics/Presto_HeatDish.jpg)
3. Toothpaste as substitute for first-aid
cream
You can use toothpaste to treat bug bites or to treat small
wounds. It
works because it is slightly corrosive and is strong enough to kill off
germs. You can also use it to treat athlete's foot. Be
careful when using it on sensitive areas, such as facial skin, because
you will
feel a small burning sensation.
4. Garlic as a treatment for colds and coughs
If you have a cold or a cough, keep garlic in your mouth. Bite it
open and chew on it a little, but don't eat it. Allow your saliva
to slowly dissolve the chew-up garlic. Garlic is known to be very
effective at killing germs and by
keeping it in your mouth, you can kill off a lot of germs in the
your throat. By swallowing the garlic fumes that accumulates in
your
mouth, you will be able to kill off the germs in your lungs.