Electric Mattress Pad and Other Cheap Heating Alternatives

Using creative heating options, you can keep Old Man Winter on the run without burning a hole in your budget. I stumbled onto my top hint by inhabiting a Hell's Kitchen shoebox of an apartment that sucked in plenty of tour-bus fumes but let out all the heat during the three Pleistocene winters I spent there. A friend suggested I buy an electric mattress pad. Not an electric blanket, but a fitted pad that heats from underneath. I never feared winter or my Con-Ed bill again.

Most electric mattress pads come with 10 settings for both sides of a queen or king. Putting the dial at 4 or 5 kept me toasty. I spent the day layered and gloved in my hovel, but nights were pure, near-naked comfort. It was as if I were on a bearskin rug by the fireplace in a ski chalet.