I wonder how much I will save now on our heating bills?

In our living room, we have two huge windows. Each window is about three feet wide and six feet tall, and they leak a LOT of air. That is fine in the spring and fall, but in the summer, hot air leaks into the house, and in winter, the cold air comes in.

In winters past, the cold air would come flowing in at such a rate that the heater was constantly running. Even keeping our house at a low 60 degrees would tax our heating system and raise our bill to a couple hundred dollars each month. That is far more than we can afford, and every winter we fall farther and farther behind on our bill. We'd have to play the catch-up game - could we manage to get our tax returns back in time to pay the past due bill before our power and gas would be cut off?

We rent, and our landlord, while awesome in many ways, is also a bit of a negligent home owner. I have a list of things I need him to fix around this house, and the only time he ever does any repairs is right before the township inspects the house - and even then, most of the repairs are temporary ones.

So, this lead to to look at alternate ways of weather-proofing that didn't require repairs or breaking rules the landlord set (example: we aren't allowed to put up plastic over the windows). So I researched and found many suggestions, including the idea of hanging quilted curtains over the windows.

We rarely have any extra money. But in late October I was given $35 to spend as I wished. I managed to buy two quilts, two sweaters, and a flour sifter at a thrift store for $30 of those dollars. The sweaters were modified into mittens and hats. The quilts were modified into window hangings (the blue ones in the picture above are in the living room, the other went on an equally large window in the kitchen).