Our house is hot. We have no central air conditioning. On our main floor, the first floor, we’ve got two window units on opposite sides of the house, and when they run constantly, it’s comfortable. Upstairs, we have ceiling fans and fans in the windows. Usually, this is fine. It gets hot upstairs, yes, but if you turn on the window fans at dinnertime, it’s comfortable by bedtime.
Not these days. The upstairs is so hot that we’ve basically abandoned the entire floor. It’s too hot to sleep there: we’ve been camping out in the basement. The showers are both upstairs, so everybody’s been heading downstairs in their towels directly after the shower so that they don’t start sweating immediately.
Cooking? No thank you. I avoided laundry at first, but since it’s so hot that everything’s extra-stinky, I had to give in and wash. Even with ferrying trash and recycling roughly three times more than usual, our whole house has that not-so-fresh feeling. Everything that could smell, does smell.
Our goldfish died. Miraculously, Madison the goldfish had survived years and years since she joined our family one long-ago Niska-Day. I suspect that the higher room temperature may have thrown off her tank’s equilibrium somehow. I had thought about trying to move the tank or swap water more frequently, but if that would have helped, well, I was too late. Whatever it was, we are now a home without pets, which makes me sad.
It is very difficult to do much of anything under the circumstances. Except, you know, very quickly bury a fish.
I don’t know how the rest of you are doing, but I’m feeling about done with this heat wave.
Claire
One of the best decisions I ever made was to get have a ductless AC system installed a few years ago. We have an older home without duct work, and the window units weren’t cutting it. They were so loud and cooled really unevenly, and our upstairs felt like an attic. I used to dread the temperatures going above the low 80s. I still prefer 70s and low 80s so I can keep the windows open, and I certainly didn’t love the heatwave this week, but at least now I can come inside and cool off, which has changed how I feel about summer in general.
Katie
I am super-jealous. We looked into options when we first moved in — with heating, too, because we have radiators, which can be pretty annoying — but we’re just Way. Too. Cheap.
Claire
I year you; it’s all about priorities. If the heat didn’t bother me so much, I would suck it up and we could have used that money for a modest kitchen renovation (we spent about $8,000 on the ductless AC). Sometimes I look at my kitchen and wonder why we didn’t do that, but then we have a heatwave like last week and I remember how much my feelings about summer have changed, and it’s worth it for me. But for people who can cope with it better than I can, absolutely save the money and spend it on something that will have a bigger impact.