Here are a few sensible hacks that cost little or no money to start doing.
When you cook anything in your oven, when you are done, just leave the oven door open.
While the oven is cooling down it will also be warming your house up a little bit. It’s free heat. You have already used the oven and the heat will be wasted if you just close the door to the oven when you are done.
After you are done with your shower or soaking in a hot tub, if your mirror is fogged up, then there is heat that can come out in your house when you are done in the bathroom.
Leave the door open while the bathroom cools off. It’s free heat. The bathroom has already been heated up during your shower, don’t waste the heat.
You may not believe it, but even when you use a small toaster oven, you have heat that can go out in your kitchen and the rest of your house just by leaving the door open after you are done. Once again (broken record here) it’s free heat. Granted it’s not much, but it’s free. You can at least heat up your hands if they are cold.
Draft dodgers are a good way to keep the cold out and the heat in your house or apartment. I had one that went under the door. There was a dodger on both sides with a piece of flat material that went under the door connecting the two sides. It worked really well. I used it for years until it fell apart. I need to find another one.
If there are areas in your house that have cold floors you can put a rug down over them. A cold floor lacks heat. When you have a rug there, the rug absorbs the cold from the floor and keeps your feet somewhat warm when you walk on those spots.
Houses that have floor vents in each room can be kept a little warmer by closing some of the vents. Say you have a four-bedroom house and each room of necessity has a floor vent in it. One of the bedrooms doesn’t get used. Well, that bedroom is having heat pumped into it and nobody is even there to benefit from it.
Close the vent and the heat that would have gone into that room bypasses that room and goes to the two rooms on either side of it. That way, both rooms will be warmer. There is a little knob on one side that you can push to close the vent. In the picture below, the little knob is on the far right side in the last slot by the rim of the vent. It doesn’t stick up very far.
You can take advantage of the sun during the day. On really sunny days, open your blinds, shades, or drapes and let the sun come in. If you have insulated drapes, they can be opened during the day and closed after the sun goes down. The insulation will keep the cold out quite a bit. You will be surprised at how well it does. Yes, the drapes may cost more at first. However, they will reimburse you over and over again for what they cost by the savings that you will have in the heating bill.
I used ceiling fans year-round to help keep my apartment cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Mine had lights on it and hugged the ceiling, it did not hang down on a chain. It was not as fancy as the one in the picture, but it did have five blades and four lights. Heat rises, and running the fan backward in the winter, it pushed the warm air back down, thereby helping keep the apartment warmer.
Then there is always the choice of putting on a sweater if you are chilly when you are awake and adding an extra blanket if you are cold at night. Or like the lady in the picture, you can hold a hot water bottle also.