Tricks to Keeping Your Towson Home Cool in the Heat

With the heat advisories coming through every day and lasting until 9 pm, you may need some tricks to keeping your Towson home cool in the heat.

Lowe’s Home Improvement gave some great advice to check and follow!

• Fans and Ceiling Fans — a simple fan can make a room feel 6-7 degrees cooler because it helps to move the air around. Place one near an air conditioning register, and face it towards people, and you have instant cooling. This way you can possibly raise the thermostat but feel just as comfortable.

• Close Shades and Blinds — though natural light usually creates light so you don’t have to use your lamps and lights, the heat coming in from the windows may be negating that effect. There are heat-deflecting curtains, and white on the outside always helps!

• Control Internal Heat — Not using appliances? Unplug them.

Use a toaster oven instead of the regular oven if you can.

Don’t put appliances that put out heat near a thermostat. This will make your A/C run harder and longer than necessary.

Don’t cook in the middle of the day, try to cook after dark when it is a bit cooler!

Wash/Dry clothes in the evening as well because the humidity is what can cause it to feel even warmer. Those appliances create humidity in the air.

• Plants — having shade around the A/C unit is good — but don’t let it get too close, because then it may block the airflow and work against you!

Hopefully these tips can help you keep your Towson home cooler in this oppressive heat. Remember to stay hydrated!

What Not to Pack

Many times people are not sure of what not to pack when moving either for the movers or for yourself!

RISMedia and Lowe’s came up with a great list to help.

For irreplaceable items, I recommend taking them with you in your car. Unfortunately many times things get broken. You want to make sure to have these items with you. If you want or need to send them, take it to a shipping place like Fedex or someplace where they will pack it for you and ship it. For Timonium residents, there is a FedEx location (map) right on York Road in Lutherville.

For heat sensitive items, you will want to have them in a climate controlled location. Moving trucks are not climate controlled, so candles and such are likely to melt.

Large items such a pool tables, which need disassembling, let the pros do it. They can take it apart at your current house and put it together on the other end at your new house. The professionals do this often, and have insurance for situations where needed. If you take apart yourself, the insurance usually would not cover it.

As for flammable, hazardous materials and such? Do not bring them AT ALL. Find out how to dispose of them properly and do so before moving. Baltimore County residents have access to the Eastern Landfill in White Marsh for most items, while the Baltimore County Resource Recovery facility in Cockeysville takes a limited number of these things. Here is the Baltimore County Hazardous Waste Recycling and Disposal web page for more details and contact information.

Hopefully you found this information useful. Contact me for more Baltimore County moving resources.