How do you "beat the heat?"?

Staying indoors in the AC and keeping hydrated. It was 108 here today.

108 degrees? I’d melt. And if you live where it is seldom hot enough to need AC and most people don’t have it?

I love hot, sunny days, so I embrace them. I can’t stand the cold, however—I barely tolerate January.

@SadieMartinPaul Have you always lived where it is hot and sunny? I have a theory about that.

Nope. I grew up in New England, and my family had a summer house on Cape Cod. Unlike anyone else, I relished every hot, humid, sticky day that came along.

I moved to the Washington, DC area many years ago, and I’ve always thrived in these much more severe summers. It’s become significantly hotter here in recent years, and most people complain continually.

I moved to FL. Rarely over 95 here. Every public place is air conditioned well. Swimming pools everywhere. Air conditioning is cheaper than heat, so even if you need to air conditioing most of the year, you will pay less annually than having to heat your house 3–6 months during the year.

Dressing in natural fibers like cotton in light colors. Loose thin clothing that covers your skin can be cooler than being half naked if you are in the sun. Think about how Arabs dress for the dessert. It is not just for modesty, it is practical. Use an umbrella as a parasol to keep the sun off. Go to the shade whenever possible.

I had several girlfriends in MI who lived in houses without air conditioning when they first got out onntheir own. I told them all to get space air conditioners and they poo pooed me. By the second summer they all bought one or had moved to a place with air conditioning. People up way north seem very resistant to believe it gets really hot in the summer for a least a few weeks.

Also, if you don’t have an air conditioner take a cool shower before bed.

Stay hydrated and try not to think about it. Or never go outside.

My own solution is to wear loose clothing, no underwear except cotton panties, and flip flops. (I don’t have to go to a public work place.) I also drink lots of ice water.

I just stay inside. I used to go swimming and stuff but I don’t have a pool anymore.
Sometimes if it’s all hot in my room at night I just bring a block of ice in bed with me because for some reason the AC won’t work in my room.

I work in the morning and go into my one air conditioned room in the hottest part of the day.

My husband and the boys are in pool right now. They have to wait for the sun to go below the house next door for the shade, otherwise they would melt.

Our area provides shelters for people with no air conditioning and volunteers pick them up and drive them home. The malls also welcome people who need to escape the heat.

Silk, cotton, and linen clothing. When I did not have air conditioning, I’d have a fan blow on me and a spray bottle to spritz myself with water on occasion. I also spent a lot of time in the basement. Now I finally have central air, and I still keep the shades drawn during the day to help keep the sun’s heat outside.

A/C and cold adult beverages.

1. I don’t cook inside my house when it’s hot.
2. I minimize my intake of hot food. I eat loads of salads and fruit during the summer.
3. I wash and rinse my hands with cool water.
4. As soon as the outside temperature is cooler than it is inside, I open my windows.
5. For those who sometimes don’t have adequate indoor cooling, I suggest soaking a shirt in cool water, wringing it out to the point where it doesn’t quite drip, and wearing it.
6. In the summer of 2006, we had about 3 straight weeks of 100+º F temps. During that spell I was storing tank tops in my freezer and wearing them.

My biggest gripe about being hot outside isn’t the heat and humidity so much, although where I live its downright vicious at times, It’s the seeing. Trying to see what I’m doing. Because I have to wear glasses they are always dripping and the sweat is on both sides. Yeah I can stop and wipe them off but in a couple minutes they are soiled. Hats help as well as having something absorbent inside the hats also help but the sweat wins. I keep a towel handy to dry off my face every few minutes. This does not bode well for the rest of summer.

I stay in the AC and wait till the cool of the evening or early AM hrs to do my shopping, laundry etc.

Thank goodness for MEIJERS and supermarkets open 24 hrs.

;D

Psht, where I live, the summers are hot 24/7. Late night and early morning just means extra humidity with more bugs.

I’m right there with @SadieMartinPaul, I relish the heat (but, unlike her, I was born and raised in a tropical place, so I’m used to it). I dread cold weather and can’t stand the A/C and so I never turn it on unless it gets so unbearably hot indoors that I start to sweat. Even then I only turn it on for about 30 minutes just to get the air flowing and then turn it back off. I’m the only person at work who always wears a jacket because of the darn A/C that’s always on full blast!

My only suggestion for you is to try to ignore it, continue to wear loose clothing and, as it’s already been suggested, stay hydrated!

We have air con and other cooling mechanisms.

Other than that, tepid showers, loose clothing as you suggested. Go to air conditioned shopping centres in the heat of the day, go to the cinema.

I like to go to the grocery store or Target, and just push my cart around, sometimes for a couple of hours. We don’t have air conditioning in our house, so that helps a little bit.

At night we have fans going and when it really gets bad, I’ll put a wet towel on my stomach or on my forehead.

Instead of hot coffee for breakfast, I’ve been making myself iced coffee.

Went to the store on Friday and got lots of produce, spent the next day cleaning, drying and cutting it up, so now all we have to do is reach in to make a quick salad or a veggie wrap.

I’ve been making a fresh pitcher of decaf iced tea every day.

I’ve been pulling my long hair up into a bun and wearing a hair band to push my bangs out of my face.

Right now I’m thinking that going to Costco would be a good idea. They have one of those giant walk in coolers, where they keep the milk.

Why don’t you all buy area air conditioners? Cool one room in your house?

I’m wondering where these people without air conditioners live. Here, you’d probably die of a heat stroke without an air conditioner in the summer.

@JLeslie in our neighborhood, you are not allowed to have the kind of air conditioner that has to be put into your window, HOA rules won’t allow it. You can only have whole house duct air conditioning, Also, our electricity cost out here in Californnia is super high, so we go without. Most of the time, our temps are in the high 50’s to the low 70’s, however last summer, we had about 4 months of 80 to 100 plus temperatures, so that sucked. I spent a lot of time in Target last summer.

@livelaughlove21 When I was little we only had one air conditioner in the master bedroom, the rest of the apartment didn’t have air, that was in NY about 30 minutes outside of NYC. The apartment I rented in MI one summer had only an air conditioner in the main living room, the bedrooms got quite hot. There are a lot of old buildings and houses up in the top ⅓ of the country that don’t have central air.

@Kardamom There are some new air conditioners that might work for you.

@JLeslie How do they work? It seems like you would have to have them drawing air from the outside.

@JLeslie No central air is one thing. No air at all is another.

@Kardamom There are portable units now. They still need to vent, but I think the vent is small. Maybe it is a hose? I wish I knew more about them. If it is just a hose you could maybe just crack a window on hot days and put the hose out, and block the rest of the open window with some sort of something. There are multifunctional units that have air, heat, and humidify, but they are more expensive. This link shows some of the portable air conditioners. Recently I was at a party and they had two huge portable ones to be able to sit outside with them blowing to have cool spots and keep the mosquitoes away. I didn’t look through the various measurements on the link, but they must come in reasonable sizes.

@livelaughlove21 Yeah I know. But, a lot of the houses that were never built with air, still don’t have any. Not even units in the window.

@JLeslie I guess I’m just used to living where I do. I’ve never met someone that didn’t have A/C because that would be nearly impossible down here. I remember living in a basement apartment in Chicago as a kid and we had window units, but since then I’ve been lucky enough to live in homes with central air. I complain a lot about living in the Bible Belt, but the low cost of living is certainly a perk. A 3 bedroom/3 bath brand new home like ours in a subdivision with a pool would probably cost double what we paid for it if we lived just a few states north.