The landlord just serviced our heaters yesterday. I was suffering, freezing, sneezing. Baking things just to have an excuse to keep the oven on all evening.
OH MY GOD, the warmth is glorious. My home is cozy. So happy.
I have been trying really hard to hold out until Nov. 1 – I like to have at least a month or 6 weeks in between turning off the A/C and turning on the heat. It’s 65 degrees in here right now and I’m pretty chilly, but not so chilly I can’t just put on a fleecey shirt. We have a dual heat pump system and a 2-story house and the bottom floor thermastat is programmable. I’ve usually program the ground floor to 70 or 71 during the day, then have it bump down to 62 or 63 at night. Upstairs, we have only bedrooms, so I’ve always just kept it at 62 – we only go up there to sleep, usually, or just to run up and fetch something. This year I’ll probably have to set it higher, though – my husband is working from home a lot and has his home-office set up in our son’s old bedroom. But I’ll turn it down to 62 before we go to bed – I hate to sleep in an overheated room.
Yeah, I work with menopausal women like you. You suck.
That said, if you’re feeling a hot flash coming on, I’d be more than happy to come over there and put my icy hands on the back of your neck. 
Hehehe never!
Every year, I try to go for “never”, but every year at some point it get cold enough and I cave. Usually around the time it’s consistantly 60 or less in the house. I can stand the cold, but the kid and the cats aren’t such fans.
We’ve been kicking around trying to go heatless this winter. My house (built in 1869) didn’t have heat of any kind until the 70’s at the earliest. I feel like such a wuss turning on the furnace when the house obviously did people fine for a 100 years. Last winter we discovered that if we closed the drapes and lit a fire for an hour or so, it would take the edge off and we’d be comfortable. I occurs to me that the cast-iron coal stove running most of the day for cooking & such would have kept the original occupants plenty warm, they way this place seems to hold it’s temperature.
When I was in college, in New Jersey, my school had a policy where heat would go on October 15th, and go off April 15th. No exceptions. Late or early heat waves (there was ALWAYS one in March, right during midterms) made you feel like you were living in satan’s underwear drawer. It was so high that I had my window open and fans running most of the year. So wastefull.
This thread makes me realise it is good to live at the more temperate end of a temperate country.
No “heating”, no AC. When winter comes we pile on the jumpers, stack on the duvets and turn on the feeble fan heaters. In summer we open the windows and whinge that it is hot.
Yay the “hot” is starting, roll on the warm christmas. 
I set the thermostat and forget it. I have no idea when the heater first ran this year, probably one night in late Sept. The last air conditioning run was probably 2 weeks ago.
It feels a little silly to have a single day where the heat runs at 3 am and the A/C runs at 3 pm, but if that’s what it takes to maintain the interior between 72 and 76, so be it.
The idea that the calendar has anything to do with people’s decisions on the use of heat / A/C is simply bizarre. Why not base yor choices on the phase of the moon or what you had for breakfast the prior week? They’re about equally relevant to the temperature inside your home.
It’s because, like Plynck, I have a hard time running the furnace for up to 8 months a year. Not only is it expensive, but it’s just so unfair! 
Holy crap! It’s snowing!!!
Guess we’ll turn the heat on.
Damn, you beat me to it.
Does this change your party tonight from Halloween to Winter Carnival?
I have the thermostat set to come on when the front room gets below 66, year around. It comes on a few times at night. Supposedly the thermostat lets the house goes down to 50 at night but I can’t seem to get the thermostat to set properly. Upstairs where the bedrooms are is warmer, of course; downstairs (we’re in a tri-level) is consistently colder. I put Reflectix up in the sliding door and window in the downstairs. I put that, or bubble wrap, in most other windows. I have no idea where the cold is getting in, we have double-paned vinylclad windows. All I can figure is that the house is poorly insulated. This summer we had 10" of cellulose blown into the attic after I realised (8 years late) that we only had 4" of insulation at up there! So the walls are probably poorly done also. Since then, though outside temps have been within a degree of last year, we’ve dropped our gas bill by 1/3! Amazing, really. I wish I’d realised it long ago.
I can’t have the house colder because, wear what I will, I get cold. My hands get horribly cold and shrink up so my rings nearly fall off. I don’t think my kids ever get cold.
In the 6+ years I’ve lived in Southern Florida, I have never turned the heat on. When winter comes, I turn the AC off and open the windows.
I envy you greatly. My brother and I would have the same policy, but we live with our insane mother. In the summer, she’s boiling alive if it’s more than 70 in the house, but in the winter she’s freezing anywhere below 80. If it were up to us, we’d leave the A/C on and set at no higher than 80 year-round, with the windows open this time of year – and no heater ever – but mother intrudes.
Yeah, I like it COLD in my apartment all year long. Growing up, I never knew that most people didn’t use a heavy blanket in the summer. I love the winter down her just because of the wonderfully cool but not too cold weather lets me sleep like a baby under a heavy blanket.