Who’s winning the temperature war at your house?

Needless to say, summer opens up a whole new battleground for us: the temperature wars. They start in June and end in September — and they’ve been happening ever since we moved in together. 

Lucky for me, air conditioning is expensive — that means I have a distinct advantage based on the high cost of keeping the house artificially cool. But since my husband turns into a miserable bear when overheated, we’ve had to come up with a compromise that works for both of us (and our budget). 

Here’s what we’ve figured out so far: 

We turn the AC off in the morning and keep the windows open to let that gorgeous summer air in (my preference). Since our house doesn’t get full sun until later in the day, we manage to keep the place cool just by keeping the blinds shut and the overhead lights turned off. 

Afternoon is when we find we need the AC most — we both work at home, so we can’t exactly escape when there’s a heavy workload to get through. We keep the thermostat set at 75 so the AC only comes on during the hottest points in the afternoon. We make sure the windows and blinds stay closed to keep in the cool air, and unless it’s really hot we don’t have it on at all. 

Nighttime is harder — on the very hottest nights (temperatures in the mid to high 20s) we keep it going all night. Mostly, though, we manage to keep the house cool by turning on the AC before dinner and then simply turning it off before we go to sleep (when the house is cooled down). That seems to keep things comfortable for most of the night. 

This pattern of AC usage has taken us a few years of compromise to develop. But right now we seem to have reached a balance — and we haven’t had any AC fights this summer. 

Do you have temperature wars in your house? If so, how do you handle them?