A pair of warm sweatpants
I'm freezing my ass at home, but I DO have pants, so I kick the can with what I have. Unfortunately the warm ones were so worn out I cut them in rags, and I can't go to the thrift store for time constraints.
I just look up to buy some new-new ones from a traditional (non-second hand) retail online and I was shell-shocked at the price
Yeah I got a pair of thrift store old-school thick Hanes sweats last year (wearing them as I type) and they were well worth the $5 I paid for them. I wear them almost every day now, interchanging them with the wool (!!!) lounge pants I also found for $5 at a thrift store.
I'm a wuss in the winter, try to be a BA mustachian and 'get used to the cooler weather' per Pete's recommendation, but I hate being cold. Which is funny because it's not like it gets below 30F often here in NC. I'm probably going to be getting long underwear to go under my pants for Xmas, and I am super stoked about that.
Staying warm in the winter has become something of a hobby for me. Developed over the course of four years, here is my go-to list of ways to keep warm in a cold house, in order of efficiency/effectiveness:
- Hot pad (I made mine out of old jeans and filled it with free ag corn I got from work, which I found retained heat for like an hour or two over rice and doesn't stink like beans). The hot pad is localized heat right on my body so it's more efficient than, say, running a space heater.
- Wool, wool, glorious wool! I am stockpiling wool clothes for life. I keep a close eye at thrift stores even for really ugly wool items just to wear around the house. And I've been surprised at how many wool socks I have found at said stores, especially during warmer months.
- Exercise. Blech, the last thing I want to do when it's cold.
- Space heater. Not my favorite option but better than heating up a whole house by a few degrees nonetheless. Sometimes I put it at the 'door' of my kid's little blanket fort and just hang out in there with him.
- Plug the drain on your tub while taking a hot shower so that the water heats up the house just a little bit more than it would if it went down the drain.
- Wear a hat in the house. Lame looking, but a lot of heat is lost from the head, so it helps a lot. At least, for me it does!
Where I am in SoCal, a space heater actually isn't a better option than heating up the whole house (if you have a gas furnace). We have super-expensive electricity and relatively cheap natural gas. Per unit of energy, gas is so much more efficient/cheap that it basically costs the same to heat the whole house with the furnace as it does to heat one room with a space heater.
My wife is perennially cold. Even in SoCal. Though it doesn't get that cold outside here, insulation tends to be terrible and it does get quite cold inside (overnight, when we never run the heat, it'll drop to the 50s in the house fairly frequently during the winter). I bought her a 'Comfy' wearable blanket a few days ago, and when she's wearing it it's amazing how much warmer she is - I noticed last night that her hands were very warm even though they're uncovered. Not the most functional garment for getting much done, but if your goal is to lounge in comfort, it definitely does the job.
