Cool It
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Just me on Monday, June 21, 2010 5:22 PM
When I was a kid we did not have air conditioning in our [century-old] house, and I couldn’t see why anyone would need it.
Hot days were for swimming and running in the sprinkler and eating popsicles, which kept me cool enough. If I felt like staying inside, I’d lie on the floor directly in front of a box fan set to high, reading and sipping iced tea.
See? Air-conditioning was totally unnecessary with that kind of lifestyle.
Now that I’m a mom and have a household of my own, though, sitting around in front of a fan for an entire afternoon is no longer an option. Even if I got all my housework done in the morning (or, let’s be honest, neglected it if the day was hot enough), the children still have many, many needs. I can’t ignore them.
Thank goodness our current house has central air-conditioning.
But I do try not to run the air too often. Having grown up without central air, I dislike that cold-toes feeling I get from hanging out in an air-conditioned environment. I only turn on our air if the forecasted high temperature for the day is well above 80 degrees, or if the day is really humid. And even when I do have it on, I keep the thermostat around 75 degrees.
(My husband is an easy-going guy who doesn’t seem to notice or care too much about the temperature in the house, as long as it’s not oppressively hot.)
Here in southern Michigan, our summers seem to be made up mostly of 80-degree days, with many in the 70s and a few in the 90s. With that mix, my estimate is that we run the air-conditioning about a third of the days.
Oh, and we only run it at night if the low temp is above 70, which is very rare here. That’s probably four to six nights out of the entire summer, most years.
Despite my self-professed ambivalence about living in an air-conditioned environment, however, I do love having it. It saves my sanity on hot days. If I lived in the south where temperatures in the 90s and 100s(!) are common, I’m sure I’d be devoted to my air conditioner.
How do you feel about air-conditioning? Love it, or hate it? Love it, but hate what it does to your electricity bill? Live without it, but long for it?
And how does the summer weather in your area affect your feelings?
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