When the winter season hits here, the nights can get so cold that your bones hurt! It’s not a surprise to anyone who is from here to see the digits staying in the singles or below this time of year. In the Winter, I try to set my alarm for early hour to start laundry. If I can get a load in the dryer before the kids get up for school, I am ahead of the game. They can get warm and cozy days clothes right out of the dryer, it is the best feeling ever! Also, the extra heat helps save on our electric bills for our monthly budget. Since the house can get beyond freezing in the nights, we used to always turn up the heater as a solution to the cold for the kids. Adjusting the furnace every afternoon, now, was costing us a substantial increase in out winter utility allowances. I started studying some helpful utility websites for suggestions, and one of them thought to use this idea of the dryer as an alternative heating source. I started getting up early after I read about this and doing laundry. I immediately noticed the warmth on the first day, but also put a good dent in my daily chores! I didn’t mind starting on laundry first thing in the day either, because I almost always was short on clean clothes working on a farm. On the fourth day, I started to notice that our gas furnace wasn’t cycling as frequently as it was before we tried this trick. I knew that meant savings on our bills in the end. After just four weeks of using the dryer at the start of the day, I saw the savings on our electric bill and was ecstatic. Our normal January heating bill is close to $250. It was closer to $150 once I initiated the change in gas usage! Most people laugh when I say the dryer is our alternative heating unit for our family. But, hey, it works so well and saves us money in the long run. I still cannot find any way to help the air conditioning in the Summer, however at least the people I was with and I can save money while I was in one of the seasons and use it for vacation!