How To Stay Warm In Winter While Indoors

Staying in a four-season country has its hazards, namely winter. If the power or gas ever gets turned off, staying warm even while indoors is a challenge. The question of how to stay warm in winter indoors is a question I see asked often lately. Mostly from a war-torn country, but also from preppers worried about the grid going down and people who are stressed about the rising cost of utilities.

The world is an unstable place, and for many right now, heating is an issue. In the past, people were prepared for it and had a fireplace or a wood-burning stove. In modern times the majority of people rely on the grid for their heating and cooking needs. When the grid goes down, they are lost on how to stay warm.

IF you have a generator, a fireplace, or a wood-burning stove, then you are sitting pretty. But.. If you have none of the above. For example, if you live in an apartment or a city and there is civil unrest or a natural disaster that knocks the grid down. Then read on..

How To Stay Warm Indoors In Winter

If you are caught unprepared and need to stay warm indoors in winter, there are things around the house that you can use to stay warm.

Layer Clothing To Stay Warm

Wearing clothing in layers is one of the oldest methods of staying warm when building a fire was not an option. Layering creates a layer of warm air trapped between the clothes. The warm air makes the clothing warmer than its individual parts. An added benefit is that if it gets too warm, you can always remove one or two layers.

Head To Toe

A substantial amount of heat is lost through the head. Wearing a wool beanie, or wrapping a shemagh or shawl around your head will keep you much warmer than without a head covering.

Keep your feet covered at all times, wool socks are the best way to keep your feet warm. Knitted wool socks are great indoors, but not that practical outdoors as they are a little bit bulky to wear with shoes. but they work great for staying warm indoors in winter.

Insulate Your Home

A home loses heat from multiple sources, through badly insulated walls, windows, under doors, etc. Go through your home carefully and insulate every nook and cranny that you find. You can insulate your home with simple things you find around your house. Bubble wrap between windows can assist in insulating single-pane or badly insulated windows. Styrofoam, cardboard, and even old clothes can be used to block cold draughts. For small cracks, masking tape over them.

Sleeping Indoors Without Heating In Winter

There are multiple ways to stay warm while sleeping indoors in winter, even with the heat off. There is already an advantage when sleeping indoors in winter, four walls and a roof will keep out the biting cold winter winds. If you have insulated your home well, there will be no cold draughts coming in. So the only concern now is how to get warm enough to be able to get a good night’s rest.

Sleeping Bag

The quickest and easiest way is to get a good 4-season sleeping bag, Throw the bag on the mattress, and voila, a good night’s sleep, if it is still too cold then a couple of blankets (inside the sleeping bag) will keep you warm.

Indoor Tent

If you have a tent, I know this will sound weird, but set the tent up inside your home, it will be much warmer inside the tent than outside of it.

Blankets

If you don’t have a sleeping bag and tent, then blankets will work just as well. In the old days pioneers and explorers used blankets and furs to keep warm. If you have furs, that’s great, if not, make do with blankets. Multiple layers of blankets can be just as warm as a 4 season sleeping bag. The best material for a blanket is wool, if that is not an option, then go for thick fleece blankets.

Mylar

Emergency mylar blankets are great insulating material, but they are terrible to sleep with, they create condensation and are fragile, so they will wear out pretty danged quickly.

That said, if it gets so cold that you need to resort to using a mylar blanket to stay warm, this is the way I would use it.

One layer of mylar, under the mattress. To prevent losing heat through conduction. Your sleep system on top and a mylar blanket over the top of all of that.

Four Poster Bed

A four-poster bed is essentially a tent with a mattress in it, it contains heat by creating a micro enclosure in the bigger enclosure that is a home. This is the way they used to keep warm in the days of yore. Since most modern homes do Not have a four-poster bed. DIY one with sticks and blankets or curtains.

Cardboard Insulation

Paper and cardboard are great insulating materials and have long been used as insulation by people who find themselves in the unfortunate position of having no other way to stay warm. Build a cardboard shelter inside your home it will be as warm as a tent. Put cardboard under your mattress instead of mylar, while not as warm as mylar, there will be less condensation.

If the situation is extremely dire, and you have no winter clothing in your home, wear multiple layers of clothes with layers of paper in between for insulation.

Avoid Sweating

With all the ways to stay warm, be careful of sweating. Stay warm, don’t get hot enough to sweat, it is counterproductive.

Do Not Drink Alcohol

There is a common myth that a nice glass of alcohol will warm a person up when they are cold. Ever had a nice glass of brandy on a cold winter’s day? Felt the warmth slowly trickle down your throat, and spread through your body.

What happens when a person drinks alcohol is that the alcohol dilates the blood vessels just under the skin, giving the illusion of warmth to the skin. In certain circumstances, the combination of alcohol and cold can be fatal.

Conclusion:

I stayed in an apartment, where the boiler was broken. It was mid-winter and averaged -12c to -15c. I didn’t have a bed so I slept on a yoga mat, with a couple of old blankets on top of it.

I then put my old US Military Modular Sleep System on top and had a couple of fleece blankets on the inside of the sleeping bag. It was nice and toasty, in fact, it sometimes got so warm I had to leave one side open to vent it a little bit.

How To Keep Warm In An Apartment With No Heating

Step 1. go through the apartment and insulate as much of it as possible, with whatever materials you have available.
Step 2. allow the sun to warm the apartment during the day, if you have mylar blankets, place them on the floor where the sun shines to warm up the apartment. Be Careful not to set your apartment on fire.
Step 3. when the sun goes down, insulate the windows. Close the shutters or blinds and use thick curtains or cover the windows with blankets.
Step 4. create a micro enclosure in the apartment, use a tent, build a makeshift 4 poster bed, or a cardboard enclosure.
Step 5. insulate the bottom of the bed. Put cardboard under the bed, a mylar blanket, yoga mats, styrofoam, etc.
Step 6. prepare the bedding, sleeping bag, blankets, and paper-insulated bedding.
Step 7. if it is really cold, sleep with clothes on (if possible, try to sleep in a base layer) layer as necessary.

Apartment Safety Precautions:

I highly recommend getting a smoke detector, a carbon monoxide detector, and a gas detector.
My reasoning is this, I have seen people do some crazy things to stay warm in an apartment during a cold winter.
I remember a couple that started a fire in their bathtub. The smoke got out of control and set off every alarm on that floor. They were trying to cook food over a fire.

In another case, a family brought a propane tank home and tried to hook it up to their kitchen stove, with no knowledge of how to do it, they messed it up and there was a steady leak of gas. Luckily they realized it in time and called a professional.

Buy the detectors, you have no idea what your neighbors are up to.