More on My Love/Hate Relationship with Heating Appliances

It appears to be a bad winter for heaters.

I probably shouldn't count my own situation at home, because my little space heater is doing just fine. Brought my room temp from 58 to 68 this morning. I'm so proud. But that I had to buy one adds to the instances in which heaters have appeared in my life. They haven't played a big role before this year.

Heat at the museum, where most of my coworkers spend their days, is non-existent. Luckily my office isn't as cold, but I've heard stories (and seen evidence firsthand) about blankets used to keep warm at desks. I have a space heater in my office (slightly illegal, as we all know) and so do half a dozen others I know of.

Just had a story this morning about a friend whose heater died last night, and then was revived, only to overreact in its new lease on life and stay on for two straight hours, making the room temperature a steamy 98. She said she opened her front door to bring in some cold air; I would have opened my windows, too.

Now. It might seem to some that I'm a little hung up on these heating appliances, but I'm not. I swear. I predict that my next post will have an entirely different subject.

Space Heater Part 3

So I bought my space heater last night!! I'm very excited. I tried it out, and my room was 68 degrees Fahrenheit! Instead of the 55 it had been before I turned it on.

Started out at Home Depot, but they had a pretty pathetic selection, so on my cousin's suggestion we went to Target, luckily not that far away. Ended up with a Honeywell, with a digital display, and it oscillates, and it was inspected and tested by Underwriters Laboratories, which I wanted in my space heater. It's reassuring to know that the heater has been tested for safety by a recommended laboratory. I won't go into it, but it had everything else I wanted, too, except maybe a remote control. How decadent would that have been.... Sigh.

Because space heaters make me nervous (and I know you're going to laugh when you read this) I also purchased a smoke detector for my room, a carbon monoxide detector (both of which I'll install this weekend) and.... a fire extinguisher! As my coworkers have just told me, Fire Marshal Bill and Smoky the Bear would be proud of me. Shiny.

Postscript: Space Heaters

Some websites to check out if you're in the market for a space heater. Besides the ones mentioned in my last post, there's also a great review on ConsumerSearch.

Then, for a cute picture and another list of top space heaters, read this. Although it's a little disappointing, because I expected the reviews to have some green basis and that doesn't appear to be the case, still it's worth a look. Some of the favorite types overlap on both websites.

Some of the reviews mentioned on both of the above websites are Amazon, Viewpoints and Epinions, for reference purposes.

Problem: Being Cold. Solution: Space Heater

I hate being cold. Period. If I'm out of doors, having fun, say playing in the snow or something, then I can tolerate it. I tolerate being cold in the winter on my walks from work. I can't stand being cold indoors. There's just something inherently wrong, in these days with heating units and indoor temperature controls.

I live in a sunroom. It's a beautiful sunroom, and warm during the day when the sun coming through the windows heats the room beautifully.

NB: If you get direct sunlight through a few windows, it might help keep a room or two warm in your house/apartment if you leave the windows clear. On the downside, when they're not covered and the sun is not shining light directly through, it will be colder. In which case, you might want to cover it with heavy curtains or plant some shrubberies outside for insulation.

So, if you're like me and you hate being cold, live in a sunroom, and don't live in the tropics, you might be interested in space heaters.

First step, in my hunt for a reliable, safe, high performance, shall we say perfect, space heater, is to research safety. And what I should be looking for in the perfect space heater. I found a brilliant website earlier this week, but managed to lose it - here is another, an article produced by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in February 2001, which seems to be the latest edition.

But I'm very into this safety-of-product information, especially when such a high percentage of house fires are caused by space heaters. "For the years 1999-2002, there were about 9,900 residential fires per year and about 190 deaths per year associated with portable and stationary space heaters " (CPSC 14 Dec. 2005). Pretty scary.

Here's to being an informed consumer - Powers That Be willing, I will not burn down the apartment.

The Dishwashing dilemma

Shuffling into the kitchen after a wonderful family dinner, my mom yells after me to put the dishes in the dishwasher. I scrape the food off the plates and stack them next to the sink as I prepare to load the machine. I’ve always had a hard time trusting that the machine will truly clean the really grimy plates, and thus, I rinse off the plates before stashing them away in the strategically designed dish-washing shelves.

As I developed an environmental conscience, I began to question the need for another machine in our everyday lives when we are perfectly capable of doing the job ourselves. I brought this issue up with the kitchen master – my mom – and she claimed that using the dishwasher actually uses less water than what we would use hand-washing the dishes. I accepted this claim for a while and now I’m beginning to wonder if it’s really true.

Water conservation is not the only issue here. There are all the materials used to make the dishwasher, the energy used to put it all together, the energy used to run it, as well as the environmental damage done when it’s not disposed of properly.

I came across an informative article on Slate.com that discusses a German study that compares hand-washing versus the machine and it seems as though the results support the use of the machine. Yet, the study does not take into consideration the issues mentioned above.

The conclusion: both methods have their perks. If you choose to hand wash- use the method mentioned in the Slate article. If you use the machine, don’t rinse before hand- just scrape.