You can go about your day and not really notice that you are skint. But when you come home to a freezing cold house then there is no getting away from it. If you have to ask "should I be warm or not?" then there is no avoiding how skint you are.
On the nights that my daughter isn't here I don't put the heating on. I put a fleece on instead.
I'm lucky that I've got a woodburner, I can light that and heat just the living room and it doesn't really cost an awful lot. It gets hot fast and stays warm all night.
When my daughter is with me then I have to put the central heating on. Part of that is obviously wanting her to be comfortable. But the other big part is that I don't want her seeing that I have no money. I hate weekends when I've got her because if we are home then the heating is on. It's one of the things I really hate. It's maybe one of the most demeaning things there is. You can eat cheap. You can buy decent clothes second hand off Ebay. You can bike or bus where you need to go. But the one thing you can't really do much about is heating.
What really brings it home to me is that my house isn't on mains gas. It runs off propane tanks and they are a total ballache. For starters, they cost a fortune. At the minute, the cheapest round here is about £64 for a 49kg bottle (the big, tall ones). Then add a delivery charge to that which is another £5-10. Plus you've got to be here for them, so if you're working full time then you are screwed.
So maybe 75 quid plus time off work for a bottle that'll last 5 weeks if I'm careful with it. Careful means using it only for heating so no hot water. If I want hot water to do the dishes I boil a kettle. When it's bath night for my daughter we go to the local pool for a swim instead. That is about £60 a month just for gas, electricity is another £35. In my old house I paid around £50 a month for both, here it costs nearly double and that's not even using it as much. If my house was as warm as it should be I'd be looking at about £120 a month easy.
I went into my daughter's room one morning during the Christmas holidays and she was asleep with her coat on and her hood up. It breaks my heart and I don't really know what to do about it. It feels like living in another time when I'm hoping for spring to come and things will warm up.
One thing that has really helped is trying to cut down draughts. The stairs are in the living room so any heat just vanished upwards. I put up a curtain across the top of the stairs at the weekend and that's helped a lot. You can actually feel a definite temperature drop when you go through it now. It's a pain in the arse, I'm convinced I'm going to break my neck one day, but I think it is worth the effort. The night after I did it was actually the first night I'd felt warm all winter.
The back door is also off the living room so I put a pair of curtains over that as well to try to make some insulation, too. It's making the place a bit claustrophobic but if I stay warm then I can live with that. I'm in the arse end of nowhere so there's nothing to look at anyway except trees.
The bastard gas also ran out at the weekend. I absolutely fucking dread when it happens because it is such palaver trying to get a refill. If I could just chuck a bottle in the back of the car then it would be fine. But they weigh about 100kg when full so no chance of moving it. I've got a small one, 19kg, that I could swap for a full one but they are loads more expensive and I'm lucky if it lasts two weeks.
I'm doing an experiment to see if electric heating is going to work out cheaper. I've got a little fan heater that I use to take the chill off the living room and I bought an oil filled radiator for my daughter's room today. It was only 30 quid from B&Q and they have a 5% deal at Topcashback (which I'm a big fan of) right now. Came to £28.50. It's on the low setting which seems to warm her room up nice and according to the Bulb (my electricity supplier) website it will only cost about 9p per hour to run at night. A quick calc looks like about £7-8 a month. That has to be cheaper than gas if it works.
I'm lucky enough that the house came with a wood-stove in the living room. When I'm here on my own I use that. I make a rule that I don't light it before 8pm and if I haven't lit it by 9pm then I don't bother. It is only small but it kicks out a decent amount of heat and holds it well. Most of the time I light a small fire and just let it burn down and that's enough. I sit right next to it like I was a Victorian peasant.
Doing some exercise is good, too. When I come in from work and the house is freezing then I do a workout and have a quick shower. With your blood moving you don't notice the cold for maybe an hour or so. Usually I'll be in the kitchen making tea anyway.
Being cold is shit. It really is. It definitely is one of the worst parts of having no money.
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