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.



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.



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.