Each year, my extended family living in nearby states come to my parent’s house to celebrate the holidays.
This has been a tradition ever since I was a child, therefore, we are always prepared to entertain a house full of people during that time of year.
I have had some of my fondest memories while spending time with my extended family. It’s always great when they visit, and especially after the pandemic, spending time with them has become that more meaningful. While my family is in town, my parents and I make sure that they have delicious home cooked meals and enough to eat. Sometimes it feels like we spend most of our time in the kitchen. We are foodies and we love to eat, so there is always something baking in the oven or cooking on the stove. Having the stove on during the days created additional heating for my parent’s home. I can recall a few times when we decided to turn off the heat because the living room and kitchen became too warm due to the non-stop use of our oven. Stoves should never be used to heat the home as they were not designed for that purpose. However, turning off the HVAC system while the oven was on did conserve energy. All homeowners are interested in saving money on their energy bills, and when you have a large number of people inside your home, energy consumption will certainly increase. Therefore, if we could turn off the heat for a few hours each day, it would be a tremendous amount of savings for us. In addition, the money we save on our energy bill could be used to purchase more food for my foodie family.