Winterize Your Apartment

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Photo Credit: Ryan Dyck (Click pic for link)

Window Screens - Screens block the Winter's Sun. Even fine mesh screens can stop up to 20% of the sunlight that could enter through the windows and help to warm your apartment. Remove your screens in the winter. (Of course, it also goes without saying that you should open your drapes during the day to let the sunlight warm your suite while you are away at work).
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Reverse Your Ceiling Fans - Most every ceiling fan has a little switch on the side that reverses the direction of the blades to clockwise, which pulls air up instead of pushing it down. If you flick the switch and run your fan on low during the winter months, it will gently pull the cooler air up from the "living level" where we are and push it up to the ceiling where the warmer air is, forcing that warm air back down along the walls to the "living level". This has the effect of using your warm air far more efficiently. Your thermostat will now keep the room at the same heat level while drawing on your heater less often.
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Make a Door Snake For Your Entry Door - In an apartment building, one of the worst insulated areas is the entry door to your apartment from the building's internal hallways. Often times there is a significant air-gap on the bottom allowing the cold air from the hallway to continually seep into your suite day and night. The quickest way to solve this is to take a beach blanket and roll it up like a log to place along the bottom of the door. The problem with this is that when you open and close the door, it gets pushed out of the way. The solution to this problem is also very simple: Take some old socks and cut the toes out of them so they make a "tube," then pull your beach blanket through a few of them until a "log" is formed that can be placed along the bottom of the door. To attach the log to the door so that it stays put when you enter and leave, pick up some velcro strips from the dollar store and attach one half to the log and the other to the bottom of the door. When summer comes, simply pull the velcro'd log off the bottom of the door and store it in the closet until next winter.
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