I live in New England, where blue-blooded Yankees can be found shoveling snow in short sleeves (with a down vest on, you know, for warmth) and neighbors place bets on who can resist firing up the furnace the longest.

I am not that hardy. But with home-heating costs past “high” and approaching “WTF” levels, I’m doing my lower heating costs this winter. And you can, too.

This winter, my family is going to:

1.) Seal up drafty windows. A tube of caulk costs about $3 at most home improvement stores; invest in a few and use them to stop up the gaps along your window sills. Do you still feel a cool breeze? Warm air hits cold glass and creates a “ghost draft” that wafts through the room; covering the windows with sheets of transparent plastic creates a pocket of air that acts as a buffer between the cold glass and the warm room.

2.) Heat only part of the house. There are a few rooms that we tend not to use all the time, so why heat them? Cover or close air vents, turn up the fins on baseboard heaters, or turn down the radiators in the rooms you use the least.

3.) Bulk up the beds. An extra comforter can make a huge difference on a chilly night. You don’t have to pay top dollar for a luxurious eiderdown – even inexpensive fleece blankets will make things cozier (and then you can turn the heat down a notch overnight). And who says footie pajamas are just for kids? (So what if they’re not sexy? Cold feet aren’t sexy either.)

4.) Don’t fire up the fireplace. It seems counterintuitive — that cozy fire is making the house nice and toasty, right? Wrong. An open fireplace actually ends up sucking warm air out of the room and up the chimney. If you can’t resist the glow, invest in a set of glass fireplace doors (they’re a little pricey, but they cost less than your heating bill) or use a woodstove to generate heat.

5) Do turn on the fans. Another counterintuitive one — aren’t fans are for cooling off, not heating up? Well… sort of. Heat rises, so you can use your ceiling fans to help push that warm air back down to the parts of the room that really need it. You can also use fans to help direct the warm air from around your woodstove to other rooms nearby.

Are you thinking about the heating bill and shivering? What are you doing to keep the costs down?