Why I Went Back to My Mexican Mother's 1970s Heating Habits at 55 (And Saved Hundreds)

#heatingbill #winterhacks #oldmexicanway 📖 Get The Old Mexican Way, every old way written down: https://oldmexicanway.com Last January the gas bill came to $298 for one woman in a small house, and I was still cold, with two space heaters humming on top of it. So I thought about my mother's house in Guadalajara in 1976. Six children, no furnace, no thermostat on the wall, and I do not remember being cold there once. She never heated a house. She heated the people in it. I went back to all twelve of her habits at 55, and last winter I saved over five hundred dollars and was warmer than the year before. Here are the twelve, what each one saved, and the one that is really an attitude. THE TWELVE HABITS 1️⃣ The sweater comes before the dial. Y tu suéter. 72 became 68. About $20 a month. 2️⃣ The curtains on a clock. Open on the sunny side at breakfast, closed everywhere at dusk. A blanket over the rod in the coldest room. $18. 3️⃣ The walk with the back of your hand. Find the drafts on a windy day, the víbora at the door, a roll of weatherstrip for the rest. $9. 4️⃣ The plastic on the windows. The $20 kit. My mother stood cardboard in the window in front of the neighbors; I can live with clear plastic. $14. 5️⃣ The house goes to bed cold, the bed goes to bed warm. 60 at bedtime, the cobija de San Marcos, the bedroom door closed. $22. 6️⃣ The bottle, not the heater. La bolsa de agua caliente from the kettle, both space heaters to the garage. $31. 7️⃣ The feet. Socks, pantuflas, a rug by the bed. A rug does not warm a room, it warms the part of you that was complaining. $8. 8️⃣ One warm room. La sala at 68, the rest of the house drifts to 64. $15. 9️⃣ The rooms nobody uses. Door shut, towel at the bottom. Close the door, not the vent. $11. 🔟 The pot on the back burner. Frijoles, caldo, pozole. The kitchen is warm because you are cooking. About $100 a month I stopped handing to the delivery man. And NEVER heat a house with the stove or oven. Buy the carbon monoxide alarm. 1️⃣1️⃣ The house goes to bed early. Lights off room by room, under the cobija by half past nine. $6, and no more midnight with the dial turned up. 1️⃣2️⃣ Winter is a season, not an emergency. Wool, soup, and people in one room, not a bill. MY NUMBERS, HONESTLY: January gas $298 to $176. Two heaters off the electric bill, $31 a month. Over five hundred dollars across the winter. Not thousands. The honest word: your house will give you different numbers. Little children, someone old or sick, keep the night temperature where the doctor says. Drying clothes indoors, crack a window in that room. None of this replaces your furnace. It shrinks the job the furnace has to do. Who profits: the space heater and the electric bill that follows it forever, the two-hundred-dollar thermostat that does what my mother did by walking to the hallway, the fifteen-thousand-dollar window quote when a twenty-dollar kit fixes most of the leak. Nobody makes a dollar the night you fill a hot water bottle from the kettle. That is not a failure of the business. That is the business. Tonight, do one: turn the dial to 60, put the heaviest blanket you own on the bed, close the bedroom door. Tell me in the morning if you were cold. What did your mother do in winter that nobody does anymore? Tell me, and your county. I read every one. CHAPTERS 0:00 The $298 bill, and my mother's house with no furnace 1:43 1. The sweater comes before the dial 2:36 2. The curtains on a clock 4:09 3. The walk with the back of your hand 5:10 4. The plastic on the windows 5:56 5. The house goes to bed cold, the bed goes to bed warm 7:00 6. The bottle, not the heater 8:11 7. The feet 9:11 8. One warm room 10:07 9. The rooms nobody uses 10:49 10. The pot on the back burner, and the oven warning 12:29 11. The house goes to bed early 13:13 12. Winter is a season, not an emergency 14:19 The honest word 15:08 Who profits, and tonight do one ⚠️ Chapter times are ESTIMATED at 150 words a minute from the script (about 20 min). Re-time them against the final render. #savemoney #frugalliving #winterheating