Better late than never, it seems a proper summer has finally arrived here in Brisbane. And it's hot. Proper hot.
So while Brad and I remember how the heck we handle this every year, I thought I'd jot down the tricks we use to cope with the heat. For the record, we don't use an air conditioner at all inside the house, nor do we work in artificially cooled offices or spend our weekends walking around big shopping centres either.
There are other means of cooling down and coping with the heat. So let's run through them now.
{Pre-warning: Yes, I live in the Southern Hemisphere. Yes, it's summer here right now! Yes, maybe you can apply some of these to your own life in your own summer. Maybe...}
While that might not look that hot to you, you can add about 5 degrees celcius to the daily maximum to take into account the additional humidity we get here. For example, my phone told me the "real feel" temperature as we were getting ready for bed last night was 30.7'C... when we were getting ready to go to bed!!!
7 Steps to Surviving Summer in South East Queensland
1. Get up early.
If it's going to be hot all day I find that I cope way better with my day if I get out of bed before I get too hot and too sweaty. If lay in bed cooking then I'm just going to feel awful and tired all day. Better to be proactive: get up, get your body cool, set up your home or workspace well for the morning, find the cool spots and prioritise keeping yourself as cool as possible with the resources you have.
2. Be strategic with the opening and closing of curtains and windows.
After I've watched the sun rise through the lounge room window I usually close that small window and the curtains to those big bay windows to keep the sun from streaming in. If I'm ever curious to check out much of a difference it makes I only have to go and stand next to the curtains a couple of hours later and I immediately get hot. I can feel the sun beating through the curtains and it confirms that this habit is worthwhile.
So in the morning I close the windows and curtains facing the sun, and then as the sun moves around the house, I close the windows and curtains as needed. Once the sun is out the back, I re-open the windows and curtains at the front. I also have open every possible window and door (thankfully, they all have screens to keep the bugs out!) that is not facing the sun, so that there's maximum airflow.
This makes a huge difference. Huge.
3. Find the cool spots.
At this time of year we have to work in certain rooms of the house in order to avoid the worst of the heat. Since I am home for most of every day (running my business from home) I only work in my office for the first few hours, then it gets too hot. I simply chase the cool; I move around the house finding the spot where there's the most protection from the sun's heat.
In the morning it's cooler out the back, in the afternoon we're better off eating near the front, or even sitting outside our front door.
Can you do this where you are? Can you deliberately hide from the sun? And move around to find the cooler spots in your home or workplace?
4. Get some fans and use them.
I didn't really think about fans very much before about the age of 33 when I moved to Bali. There I lived with them on and near me as much as was humanly possible. When I moved back to Sydney I sort of forgot about them again because I lived in places with air conditioning and very few fans. But once I moved up to Brisbane to live with Brad, my love of all kinds of fans was rekindled.
Brad loves his fans. He uses them at work all the time in summer. (You couldn't be a tradesperson up here without your own portable fan!!!)
And every summer he pulls out a handful of fans from well hidden cupboards and suddenly, with the help of our ceiling fans, we have a fan in every room. They're amazing.
Way healthier than air con. Way easier to transition between the heat outside and the usually-cooler temperatures inside. And they're much cheaper to run than air-conditioning units, not to mention way better for the environment too.
5. Get in water.
We are very lucky in that we have a saltwater pool in our backyard. (It gets mostly ignored in winter and used multiple times a day by both of us as soon as it gets stupidly hot!!). But you don't have to have your own pool to get in water. Maybe you can access a local pool or go to a beach or get in a creek or a river or a dam or a lake.
Failing all of those options (I get it, not everyone around the world has access to safe outdoor bodies of water) then getting in a cool or cold bath can be amazing. Don't have a bath either? How about a bucket? Can you fill it with clean water and then douse it over your body? If you can, do that. I know it's not getting into water but getting cool water on you will help cool you down.
Other ways to get water on you are the obvious shower but also a waterfall (yay!) or even just a hose or a sprinkler that sprays water on you.
If you live somewhere with water shortages (bummer! I'm sorry!) then a clean cloth soaked in water and put around the back of your neck will help to cool you down while using way less water than most of these other options.
6. Drink and eat cool or cold things.
This one in particular might seem stupidly obvious but it's easy to forget--when you're tired, lethargic and too hot to care--that what we put into our bodies can make a difference to our core temperature, and therefore how we feel.
In summer I drink tap water that I've stored in the fridge. I put icecubes in anything I want to drink straight away that happens to be room temperature when I grab it. And I tend to eat cooked meals cold instead of reheating them. At some point if I fall in love with salads again I'll be eating them a lot in summer too.
Oh, and I have a big green smoothie most days. And they--apart from being ridiculously healthy--are straight out of the fridge!
7. Go find some trees.
Trees create amazing shade. There's something about the quality of shade that a tree provides that's so much better than an artificial building can offer.
So that's my final step in staying cool. Short but sweet, find one or more trees, big or small and go hang out in their shade. And while you're there remember to say "thank you".
All photos, except the screenshot, were taken by Brad, my partner, also known as 