Beat The Heat

So we’re entering our second week of near 100/100+ temps.  It’s been brutal.  Even places with ACs sized with the correct tonnage for the space can’t compete when it gets this hot.  I can tolerate it fairly well during the day.  I eat a LOT of popcicles. But night is a problem because hubs and I can’t sleep when it’s 70 or higher (yeah I know, we’re freaks but we both turn into human furnaces when we go to bed).  Add to that my need to feel WEIGHT on me when I sleep and not to have anything other than my head hanging out of the covers (evidently I retain some kind of fear of the boogieman) and you have a recipe for NO SLEEP in the Nolan household.

So I’ve been trying all kinds of things to try and beat the heat.  We already have ceiling fans in almost every room of the house, so they’re running all the time.  I’ve got two tower fans that I’ve moved to the bedroom , but they don’t do much as hubs can’t sleep through the noise of them running on high and can’t tolerate ear plugs like I do.

One night I tried putting the sheets in the freezer before bed.  This might have worked better had I waited until AFTER the bedtime routine of taking out contacts, washing face, brushing teeth, etc. before remaking the bed.  By the time I crawled in, they were room temp again.

I’ve gone to bed with wet hair, had a cold shower before bed, slept with my ice pack from the chiropractor.  I’ve researched Chillows (they apparently have a habit of leaking), Cool Gel Pads (a number of people say they don’t work as advertised), and any number of other things.  A friend suggested I use a sheet folded over to add extra weight instead of heat to the covers.  That’s helped that problem a bit.

But I think I’ve finally stumbled across something that helps a lot that’s actually pretty cheap.  I ordered a couple of old school style ice bags from Amazon (the ones that had all good reviews and no reports of leaking) and filled them with green Palmolive.  Yes, the soap.  According to Google the green dish soap is supposed to be the best at simulating that blue gel goo inside commercial ice packs.  I have no idea why the green.  But buy it I did and fill the ice packs I did.

Y’all…they stay cold ALL NIGHT LONG under the covers.  I shoved them down to the foot right as I went to bed and they kept the sheets down by my legs (which are always what seem to catch on fire at night), switching them with my feet when one melted all the way.  That was about 3 or 4 this morning and the second one was still mostly frozen.  I still woke up every hour, but I could just move my foot over and touch the cold pack and I usually fell back asleep.  They didn’t leak, and they were still actually cool to the touch when I tossed them back in the freezer this morning.  And because I used this kind of ice bag instead of ziplock bags, they didn’t SWEAT either, so there were no wet spots on the sheets.  Grand total….about $25 bucks for both the ice bags and 2 giant bottles of dish soap.  It’s a damn sight cheaper than another air conditioner.

One thought on “Beat The Heat

  1. Awesome! I’m glad you found the answer. Luckily, my air conditioner is keeping up, even when the temp was 105 for about 3 days. We are ok at 74 or 75 degrees, but no hotter than that. I’m like you…i get hot with the quilt, but I need that weight on me. I don’t know what it is about needing that cover.

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