Neilen’s Occasional Perch

It seems that you either grow up in a hot-water bottle family, or you don’t. Mine wasn’t a hot-water bottle family and so I never used them. Not that I have anything in particular against them, it would just never occur to me. Janneke, on the other hand, is from a family of notable bottle-philes that approach any signs of cold weather armed with several heated hot-water bottles. In spite of this influence on me old habits die hard; I shunned the bottle. Until recently.

A couple of months ago I fell prey to a fairly nasty case of the ‘flu. In this weakened state, the magical abilities of comforting aches and shakes presented by the hot-water bottle that Janneke offered me proved irresistible. So much so that she gifted me a brand new hot-water bottle I could call my own.

Once I had recovered from the ‘flu the bottle found a resting place in a bottom drawer, forgotten for the moment. Winter approached, and so did cold evenings. While I very seldom use a heater during the day, I usually run my little fan heater in my bedroom about an hour or so before I go to bed. Helps to keep the bed-chills at bay. Not excessive, but like most South Africans post 2007, I’m always thinking of ways to reduce my electricity usage.

Then it struck me: if going to bed with a hot-water bottle avoids the need for the pre-warming of my bedroom, I would be exchanging an hour of heater running with the equivalent of about 2 minutes for boiling the kettle. Being of a somewhat empirical bent I decided to try it out. And voila! It worked like a charm!

Conclusion

So, if want to reduce your bedwarming electricity costs by a factor of thirty, try a hot-water bottle. Oh, and thanks for my hot-water bottle, Janneke!