The Canny Lass

I was reading an online article about using “Victorian” methods to help retain heat in the house during the winter. I clicked on it expecting amazing revelations and was disappointed because I already did everything it said.

But it occurred to me tonight that, actually, there’s a lot of people who do not follow this advice. I know this because of my neighbours. You see the article advised putting heavy curtains up at windows to keep out chills, closing the curtains at dusk. I have at least five neighbours who don’t close their curtains at all during the winter. You can see right into their houses and I’m perplexed as to why they leave the curtains over. Surely the heat must be flying out of the house? It’s not the bedrooms, but in the living rooms … not that I’m spying, you can’t help but see in at night.

Anyway, I invested in several heavyweight curtains for my house over several years and many of them are second-hand because buying curtains for the large windows in my house is really expensive. My house was built in 1974 and has a lot of big windows. I love it because there’s loads of natural light, but it’s expensive to buy curtains for them. Initially, I was looking only at house curtains, but then I stumbled upon ex-hotel curtains and former theatre curtains for sale. I bought a pair of long former hotel curtains in cream for my bedroom. I washed them and ironed them and hung them up, but they weren’t quite right. So, I bought a dark blue fabric dye from Amazon, stuffed the lot in the washing machined and dyed them blue. Because of the material of the curtains, they didn’t go a dark blue, but turned out a really nice mid blue. They are lovely thick curtains that act as great blackout curtains in the summer and are good for keeping out the cold in the winter. I bought them on E-bay for £20.87.

Our front door is actually two front doors: there’s the outside one, then there’s the porch and another door. However, neither of them keep out the draughts despite the outside one being relatively new and modern. I remembered in my grandparents’ house how they had a home-made draught excluder on one of their doors, and how good it was for keeping the cold out. So, I bought a draught excluder. I could have made one, but I’d just had my daughter and had no time. The draught excluder does work to an extent, but you have to have it properly situated and it sometimes gets kicked out of place.

Anyway, about two years ago, I was thinking about reducing my energy costs and some of that included retaining heat in the house. I remembered looking through a craft book and someone used an old carpet (think an old-style hall carpet, you know the type that you unroll and put out) as a door curtain. I’d never heard of door curtains before, but it made sense. I bought one second-hand from Ebay, but it didn’t quite fit. It was too short. Also, I really wanted a red velvet curtain to give the doorway a more dramatic look. However, velvet is expensive to buy. Really expensive. Then it occurred to me that if you can buy former hotel curtains, perhaps you could also buy old theatre curtains. So, I went on E-bay and bought one for £87. You might balk at that cost, but it’s a really long, really heavy curtain that does keep out the draughts. It washed beautifully and looks lovely. Plus it will last me for years. The hallway is warm and cosy now, and I’m not worried about heat loss. I think I’ve probably already made my money back on the amount of heat I’ve saved.

Another way of targeting window draughts, according to the article, is to have a valance or pelmet on your curtains. This is an added row of curtain material or a box. It makes your curtains look fancy and helps keep out the cold. I don’t have any on my curtains, I don’t really like them and I’m not sure they would add that much, but I could be wrong.

So, in summary, what you need to do to help reduce heat loss from windows and doors are these simple things:

• invest in heavy curtains for your windows and close them at dusk to retain heat in the house – I do this with my curtains
• consider covering draughty doors with a heavy door curtain – I really recommend this as it’s made an amazing difference to the heat in our hall
• think about putting up a curtain valance or pelmet for additional draught proofing
• buy them second-hand from sites such as E-bay or Vinted

Do you have any good tips on how to retain heat in your home? Comment below.

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