Freezing at home in summer
It’s 88 degrees outside. The sun is shining, everyone is wearing shorts and sandals. It is unquestionably summer… So why am I sitting in my living room freezing?
My air conditioning, or, as I’ve started calling it, the winter machine, is making me shiver.
Here’s something I bet you don’t know: your thermostat may be set to a perfectly civilized 70 degrees, but the air coming out of those vents will be somewhere in the 50s, which explains a lot.
Sit under one of those vents for twenty minutes in your summer pajamas and suddenly you’re less “August in Southampton” and more “meat locker in Omaha.”
My husband and sons are so obsessed with dry-aged steak that they have a dedicated refrigerator for it. Honestly, they could probably save electricity and just hang the steaks under our AC vents.
Which brings me to the Great Summer At-Home Dressing Problem:
Outside: 88 degrees.
Thermostat: 72.
My kitchen: 63 degrees.
Chair directly beneath the AC vent: apparently February.
Bed at 2:00 a.m.: anybody’s guess.
I hear you thinking: “Just turn up the thermostat!” Believe me, I’ve tried. Once it’s 90 degrees outside, 70 seems to become some sort of thermostat Maginot Line. Go up a few degrees and apparently we’ve surrendered the house to summer heat.
The hotter it gets outside, and the longer it stays hot, the lower the temp the AC blows, which has led me to a slightly ridiculous conclusion: Summer at-home dressing isn’t necessarily summer dressing.
We spend all winter heating our houses and dressing to stay warm. Then summer arrives, we refrigerate our houses…and still need to dress to stay warm.
It makes sense.
So I’ve stopped dressing for the temperature outside when I’m spending the day inside. I dress for the little climate zone I’ve apparently created in my own house.
If your house is comfortably cool, lightweight cotton short pajamas may be all you need.
If you’re a little chilly, long cotton pajamas, a nightgown or a nightshirt work beautifully.
If you’re moving between “pleasantly cool” and “who turned this place into a walk-in freezer?”, add a robe. Put it on, take it off, repeat until September.
And if you live with someone who considers 68 degrees a perfectly reasonable indoor summer temperature… This is why God invented French terry robes and loungewear.
Yes, those sound suspiciously like things I’d recommend in winter. But the winter machine is running, dress accordingly.
Big hugs,
P.S. If you come to my house in August and see me sitting around in cozy loungewear while it’s 90 degrees outside, please don’t worry. I’m fine. Check on the steaks.
