My Mom’s generation had no such thing as air conditioning. She talked about how she and friends would go to the movies (for a nickel) and watch a double feature whenever the heat was unbearable because the theater was one of the few “air-cooled” places in town.
From my understanding, air cooling consisted of a fan blowing across a huge piece of ice, but this rudimentary system did provide some relief from the stifling summers In Texas and Illinois where Mom spent her childhood.
Even when I was growing up, AC was practically unheard of in the Northeast, and we certainly did not have it.
It absolutely offended Mom’s environmental sensibilities. Way back before it was fashionable, she questioned the excessive use of electricity and the burning of fossil fuels to produce it.
She was truly a woman ahead of her time.
And there’s no doubt that running air conditioning is also very expensive. Heating and cooling our homes takes a big chunk out of household budgets. But there are ways to minimize our cooling costs, and Mom was a whiz at knowing and finding methods to do just that.
Here are some of her techniques, along with a few others I’ve learned about along the way.