Every year in the fall, I swear I am not going to turn on the heat until it gets unbearably cold in the house, until we’re all shivering under multiple blankets at our various workstations.
But every year I cave. As soon as I get up one morning and it’s below 20 degrees in the house, I start feeling unhappy and then I always go straight to the thermostat and turn it over to heat.
And then, every year, after I turn it to heat I swear I will not put the A/C back on no matter how much of a summer throwback we might get, that it’s well into September now and I can certainly celebrate and enjoy any of the few warm days we might have left.
And then, like last night, I give up the minute I have to try to fall asleep in a house that is 25 degrees, wondering how anyone could ever be comfortable in such terrible tropic surroundings. I always get up and turn the A/C back on.
Then I always flit back and forth between heat, A/C, heat, A/C for a couple of weeks before fall really settles in.
Isn’t Ottawa the world capital with the largest temperature range? It’s easily possible for us to see temperatures here of +30 degrees Celsius in the summer, and -30 degrees Celsius in the winter, within a single year.
Given that I live in a place with crazy extremes of weather, how is it that I have become someone who is basically only comfortable in a narrow two degree range between 21 and 23?
It makes me feel like quite a little princess. But it doesn’t look like I’m adapting any time soon, so best to put aside my annual vows and just accept that I’ll be visiting the thermostat twice daily from mid-September to mid-October, QED.
TurtleHead 
Most modern thermostats (including the one I know you have) allow you to set a temperature window: heat if below X, cool if above Y. There’s a minimum gap between X and Y but you can broaden it if your status as a delicate flower changes.
🙂
I just took advantage of this setting on my thermostat for the first time this year. My parents have used it as well. I think they have the same thermostat as you, and they wanted the minimum gap between heat and cool. It was 3 degress Farenheit (about 1.5 degrees celsius). So that should suit your needs.
No need for guilt inducing trips to the thermostat.
I was just thinking about this…but about clothes and not the thermostat. This morning was shorts weather; this evening was jeans weather. It’s that wonky time of the year – you never know what you are going to get from day to day.
Being uncomfortable when you don’t have to is just silly. Stow the guilt. Eve is bitter that I am so cold-tolerant and Matt is so heat-tolerant and yet she is a very narrow-windower, like you. Sometimes she has her fan and her space heater on at the same time. You just do what you need to.
I agree with bibliomama2 – no point in being uncomfortable if it is within your control to change it. I’m not as big a fan of air conditioning – I prefer open windows and fresh air – but my furnace goes on the very first morning that I wake up cold. Life is too short to spend it shivering.