Everyone loves a warm summer day, but if the temperatures climb too high, that summer heat can become miserable, or in some cases, dangerous. Here are fast and simple ways to help beat the heat when the weatherman calls for “excessive heat.”
Or I could just crank up the AC, Tracey.
Yes, you absolutely could, if you have AC. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to air conditioning or can afford the electricity bills that come with using it all the time. And if everyone on the grid starts using their air conditioner, you could be left with a brownout or worse, a blackout.
So yes, as someone who absolutely needs my air conditioning to sleep, I get it. But it isn’t the only way to stay comfortable during a heat wave. Keep these ideas tucked in your back pocket to help stay cool fast.
1. Drink More Water
This one is the most important thing you can do during a heat wave. You have to stay hydrated to function well. If you’re doing a lot of physical activity or sweating a lot (hello, fellow sweaters), go ahead and add some electrolytes in there, too.
(Better yet, try making this homemade switchel – farmers have been drinking it for centuries while working in the summer heat, giving it the nickname Haymakers Punch.)
I can’t stress enough how important it is to stay hydrated in hot weather, especially the very young and the elderly.
Let’s start with ways to keep your home cooler, then we’ll move on to ways to keep you cooler.
2. Ceiling Fans
If you have them, use them. But make sure they’re moving in the right direction. During the summer, ceiling fans should be turning counterclockwise.
Yes, your ceiling fan can spin in more than one direction, but more importantly, it should. You may need a step ladder to find it, but every ceiling fan has a small switch that will change which direction it turns.
During the summer, if you set it to turn counterclockwise, it will pull the air up, which keeps hot, stagnant air moving. There’s nothing worse than sitting in still, hot air.
3. Close Your Windows and Your Blinds
During the day, keep your windows and blinds closed. You’ll keep even more heat from entering your home. You may be tempted to open your windows up the second the sun goes down. Hold off. The outside of your home has been absorbing the sun’s heat all day, and now it’s releasing it. Wait a couple of hours past sunset to open the windows.
If you want to make this trick even more effective, place a fan in your windows, so they are pulling air out of your house. If you have more than one fan available, place one fan exhausting hot air on the most western side of the house, then place another fan, set to pull air in on the most eastern side of the house. Don’t forget to close them again first thing in the morning.
4. Create Your Own Swamp Cooler
Evaporation coolers, sometimes known as swamp coolers, are an easy way to get more from a standard fan. Place a bucket or large bowl full of ice in front of the fan and turn it up on high. The breeze from the fan carries the cool air from the evaporating ice. (It helps to have a good fan. I have two of these Dreo tower fans, and I love them, especially if you appreciate a quieter fan for sleeping.)
No ice? Grab a bed sheet and wet it down with cold water. Wring it out well and hang it over a window with a fan blowing behind it. This trick works best at night.
5. Eat Cool
Nothing makes a hot house even more unbearable than turning on the stove. Eat cold salads or cold leftovers, and do most of your cooking outdoors.
6. Get a Set of 100% Cotton Percale Sheets
Ditch the microfiber and ditch the sateen. The percale weave creates a crisp, cool fabric (think good, button-down shirt). You don’t even need to get a crazy-high thread count to experience a much cooler bed. 200-thread count is sufficient. Cotton percale bed sheets are the way to go.
7. Try a Buckwheat Pillow
While you’re making your bed, grab a buckwheat hull pillow. The hulls don’t compact like many manufactured materials (memory foam, polyester fiberfill, etc.), which means air can flow through the hulls. The pillow stays cooler, keeping you cooler, too.
Okay, now let’s look at a few quick and easy ways you can keep your body cooler in a heat wave. We’ll start with my personal favorite, and the one that everyone groans about when I tell them how well it works.
8. Take a Cool or Lukewarm Shower
Cool water, not cold, makes it easier for our bodies’ own natural cooling system to work more effectively, bringing warmer blood to the surface of our skin, where it’s cooled by evaporation, before moving on. So, a cool to slightly warm shower will cool you much faster. If you enjoy a bracing cold shower, save that for last and only if you have no heart conditions.
It’s cheap, it’s fast, and it cools your body down. It also helps you sleep on the hottest nights.
9. Wear an Evaporative Cooler around Your Neck
This handy little evaporative neck wrap was recommended to me by a reader. As someone who spends quite a bit of time out in the garden, even when it’s absolutely gross out, this thing has been a godsend.
I just soak it in cold water for about five minutes, squish the gel into place, then soak again for fifteen minutes. I pop it on and head out to the garden. As the water inside the neck wrap evaporates, it keeps me cool. I was shocked at what a great job it does for such a simple design. No messy fans that spray water or ice packs that need to be refrozen. It just works.
10. Dampen Your Hair with a Spritz of Cold Water
Keep a spray bottle filled with water in the fridge. Whenever you’re feeling especially warm, give your hair a quick spritz. The cold water cools your scalp, instantly cooling you, but the water will continue to cool you down as it evaporates. This handy little trick works a treat right before bed, too.
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