An open fire

This winter has been exceptionally mild. We usually turn our heating on in November but this year we didn’t have the heating on until just before Christmas. We found that having an open fire in the sitting room each evening was enough for us.

The fire in our sitting room

Sitting room fire

We only have our heating come on for an hour (two if it’s really cold) each morning and again each evening. At weekends when instead of working we are sitting in the dining room reading the papers we put the heating on for a bit extra as it soon feels cold when just sitting in here. My husband decided that instead of doing this we should have a small fire in here.

dining room fire

We are trying to be more frugal and keep our bills down. My husband now gets the winter fuel allowance and this covers our coal and logs.

We are starting to think more carefully about how to reduce our bills as we slow down with work towards retirement.

We have recently made much more effort to turn lights off and only light the room we are in. We are quite sure that by being more careful we can reduce our bills which have been rather high in the past. We are making it second nature to be more frugal. We hope that by making small changes we can cut down our outgoings and it is really lovely to see an open fire and feel it’s warmth. There is something very comforting about an open fire.