A house that gets cold from the inside

Winter outages are a warmth problem before they are a gear problem. A furnace with an electric control stops even when the fuel tank is full. The house cools for hours, then all night. Older people, babies, and anyone who is already sick feel that first. The quiet risk is treating it like camping. It is your own bedroom, and nobody is coming to check on the person who went to sleep cold.

Before buying anything, use what the coat closet already has: wool or synthetic layers, dry socks, hats. Pick one room, shut the door, and drag the bedding in. That holds heat the rest of the house is losing. A new blanket in five open rooms does less.

The shopping line is still one layer per person, because a shared blanket is how someone on the edge of the pile gets left out. Winter plus a Thorough budget means a cold-weather sleeping bag. The other times warmth shows up, it's an emergency blanket: a two-week or 30-day kit, or Thorough, even if winter was never marked. Those foil sheets slow heat loss. They are a miserable bed in a hard freeze, and they are the wrong object to wrap a baby in. The form only knows the headcount you typed. If one of those people is an infant, change the purchase.

Winter also adds a weather radio. Ice takes lines down, and the news you need is whether this is a night or a week.

No heater on the list. Indoor fuel heaters are how carbon monoxide shows up in a closed room you just tried to warm. A lot of the ones sold for camping are outdoor-only, and the curtains are closer than the label assumes. Follow the heater you already own. Don't add one because a shopping list made it look like a standard item.