Mom says if it's too hot without a/c 'go outside and sleep'
Food or air-conditioning? For Fiona and Paul Gierzynski, the parents of four children ages 14 to 20 and a Wheaton couple focused on cutting costs, the choice was easy.
"We sat down with the kids and said look, we can keep the air conditioning and then you could give up one week of groceries a month, or we can not have air conditioning, and we'll just be hot," said Fiona Gierzynski. "Of course nobody wanted to give up food."
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
The kids, who also have jobs, also didn't want to contribute to the cost of the air conditioning, she noted. So the air had to go.
As a result, the summer electric bills for the couple's four-bedroom house is roughly $90 a month, compared to the roughly $250 to $300 a month they'd be paying if they used the air conditioning, Gierzynski said.
"Yes, it gets hot in our house," she acknowledged. "That's why we all have passes to the local pool.
"We bought a few fans, put them up around the house and keep the blinds closed during the day."
She doesn't view her or her husband as ogres, noting many countries don't have air conditioning.
But the change hasn't been a hit with the kids.
One of her sons "has the top bunk in the shared room upstairs and says it's way too hot up there. But we have managed.
"We just say 'If it gets really unbearable, sleep in the yard. Everybody has tents. If you're that hot, go outside and sleep. Pretend you're camping.'"
Gierzynski, who has worked as a substitute teacher for the past four years, had planned to be teaching this summer. That job fell through due to a lack of sufficient enrollment, she said. So for the summer, the family budget will be relying on the income of her husband, a telecommunications engineer at Tellabs.
Fiona said she has watched their grocery bill rise between $40 and $80 a month.
"It depends on how many nights a week I'm going to serve meat," she said. "Some months my grocery bill is more than my mortgage."
The family budget is also feeling the impact of high gas prices. Her husband commutes to work in a truck that gets roughly 35 miles to the gallon. But the family car, which she typically drives is a Suburban. With a big family, they need it, but keeping gas in it is expensive, she said.
"It used to be I could get by with $20, and then it became $40 and now if I don't put $50, it doesn't even move the little dial on the gas tank," she said of the Suburban.
She notes having a big family has prompted her to focus on controlling costs for years. The family has never had cable television, and in the winter, they don't turn the heat up above 62 degrees.
"We have two fireplaces in our house," Gierzynski said. "My mom made everybody an afghan, so each of the kids has their own afghans. We leave them lying around in the living room, and if you're cold, there's an afghan, or we'll start a fire in the fireplace."
The couple also takes an environmentally friendly approach to their yard, which she said keeps costs down.
"My husband likes to joke that our yard does not have a chemical dependency and a drinking problem," she said. "We never use lawn chemicals or weed our yard, which means we don't need to water it. So we don't need to worry about an extra water bill in the summer because we don't do it. When it rains, the grass gets watered. When it doesn't rain, it doesn't."
To her, the lawn looks fine.
"There are dandelions in it," she said. "There are weeds in it, but one person's weeds is another person's wildflowers."
The family also works to keep costs down when they vacation by camping -- a past-time they enjoy.
"For people who've never tried camping, think about going to a campground and paying maybe $20 a night for a place to stay instead of $150 in a hotel," she said.
"We've even done the dells that way. It was unbelievable spending only $20 a night to stay in the Dells. There are three camp grounds that are right in the Dells, within five minutes of downtown."
What are you doing to make ends meet?Write to psmith@suntimes.com