One Snarky Chica with Issues

The side of my apartment building that I happen to live on gets the afternoon sun streaming into the windows as it sets each day. In the winter, this is great as it warms up the apartment without the expense of the gas heat. However, in the summer it means that it heats it up too. And that means the expense of the AC kicking on to cool off the apartment.

In order to combat this (after getting a rather large electric bill), I took matters into my own frugal hands.

No, I did not change into shorts and a tank top and attempt to sweat it out. Okay, that’s not true. I did take to doing that a few weeks ago when it wasn’t in the 90’s like it is now. Obviously it got to a point where that was not practical.

Then an idea struck.

I went around my apartment on a bit of a scavenger hunt. I was looking for binder clips, thumb tacks and dark colored blankets. I found one dark blanket and one dark sheet from a set no longer in use and plenty of thumb tacks and binder clips.

So, I put two tacks up per window (one on each side). Took my blanket/sheet and attached one binder clip to each corner. Then I hung the binder clips over the tacks. It worker perfectly - they were like little hooks.

The result?

The dark blanket/sheet keeps the heat of the sun out in the afternoons. That means that I am cooler and that my AC runs less. Is it attractive? Not exactly. But is saves me money and that is definitely sexy.