Summer is in full swing and I decided to slow down a little bit. I am using the popular TBT, (Throw Back Thursday) idea. I will be reviewing my posts from 5 years ago…when my only followers were: my husband, my sister, and my best friend!
I live in a home with under-insulated walls. We replaced all the windows, but have not had the funds to insulate the walls. (We did insulate the attic when we bought our home.)
So, what do you do until you can insulate?
1) Furniture Placement: Put bulky furniture on outside walls, i.e. china cabinets, dressers, bookshelves, filing cabinets, dressers. In your storage areas stack boxes along the north and west walls. Another tip is to put a throw over a kitchen chair and place it against the wall.
2) Wall Coverings: Hang a quilt, tapestry, throw, or even place mats on outside walls. You can hang them on curtain rods or attach them directly to the wall. See how to convert a throw to a tapestry here: http://wp.me/pKNzn-tm.
3) Pictures: Do large groupings of artwork and photos on outside walls. I balance it with a blank or empty inside wall.
4) Mount furniture: Shelves are obvious, but you can also hang folding chairs and card tables, see http://wp.me/pKNzn-tj.
5) Stack stuff on the floor: I have a box of last years receipts against the wall behind a chair in the living room. On top of it I store a lap table that leans against the wall. I have also stacked briefcases and bags behind furniture against the outside wall.
6) Fill in the holes: I have a china cabinet in the north-east corner of my kitchen. I rolled up my tablecloths and wrapped them in plastic wrap to keep the dust off. I stacked the rolls between the wall and the china cabinet. If I fold them into a narrow rectangle before I roll them, they don’t even show.
7) Insulate behind cabinets: I shoved newspaper between the Masonite board behind my Lazy Susan cabinet and Astro Foil behind the drawers on the outside wall, see http://wp.me/pKNzn-3O.
There are also many ways to insulate outside as you will see in the comments section!
My throw/tapestry.
frugalfish.org 
Our house is an old farmhouse with little insulation. Last year after paying a high gas bill, my boyfriend wrapped the outside of our house on three sides with plastic. The reason he only did three was the back side of the house is kind of sheltered. It made a huge difference in the heating bill and how warm it is in our house. Summer went by fast and we never took the plastic down. Also it seemed to help keep the house cool. We just cut the plastic away from the windows. Anyway, this fall we should have put new plastic up all over because the plastic that is there is falling apart. So now we know! New plastic each fall we live in this house unless we can get our landlord to insulate it!
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You bring up a great point – whatever steps you take to improve the energy efficiency in the winter will also cut the cooling bill in the summer.
Another idea to insulate outside the house is to fill lawn and leaf bags with leaves and place them around the house on the ground. In the spring you will end up with leaf mulch that you can use on your flower beds or in your garden.
I read in a Louis L’Armour book that they would bring dirt up and bank it around the house in the fall. After the first heavy snowfall they would pile the snow up around the house.
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