Hello! This will be a ranty post, so if you're not up for reading my rants turn back now. Anyone who follows me on Twitter or Facebook knows I HATE AIR CONDITIONING and tend to complain about it fairly often. Seriously, everyone spends all winter complaining about the cold and then as soon as it warms up and you can defrost and thaw you try to turn the indoors into a replica of January. It literally makes no sense. And for those of us stuck indoors all day when the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, we get no relief. My bones are still ice cold from the winter I feel like I haven't had a chance to dethaw yet. I sit at my desk on a beautiful 90 degree day in pants and a sweater and I still have goosebumps. I even became the office joke when I turned my space heater on in at the end of May. It's now July and my space heater is usually on for most of my work day. Why is this even a thing? I have a theory that A/C has made our society weak. If the temperature is just enough to make you sweat (the bodies way to naturally cool you down) everyone freaks out and runs towards the nearest indoor human refrigerator. Believe it or not sweating is SO good for you, read the benefits here.
I grew up in an old farm house with no central A/C. If the summers got too hot to handle we'd put window units in, and as a kid I enjoyed having a window unit in my bedroom on days that were just too hot but as I got older I used it less and less and started enjoying sleeping with the windows open, the fresh night air filling my room. And now that I live in a house with central A/C I so wish I could go back to enjoying summer with the fresh air coming through the windows, but sadly my husband is a victim of air conditioning addiction (I love you Josh!)
I remember spending my summers running around outside all day in the sunshine, coming inside to rest, grabbing a popsicle, or homemade iced mint tea and letting my body cool down naturally. Today kids spend 10 minutes outside complain it's too hot and beg to go back inside to sit in the A/C in front of the TV. What is air conditioning doing to us? How did our ancestors survive without air conditioning? They worked outside all day in the summer sun, came into their electricity and air conditioning-less homes and they survived.
Even Europe thinks our air conditioning habits are ridiculous and a waste of energy. Read about that here. In 2014 I did a summer study abroad session in Italy. I lived in Florence on the 4th floor of an air conditioning-less building (elevators aren't as common there either) we climbed stairs all the way to the 4th floor multiple times a day in 80-90 degree heat. One a particular trip to Venice it got VERY hot (heat index was in the 100's) our hotel on that trip if I remember correctly had A/C but they didn't use it like they did in America. If I were to guess it was 100 degrees outside and about 85-90 degrees inside. Not to mention the energy
I just hope someday I can go somewhere in the summer (the movie theater, restaurants, grocery stores, etc.) and not worry about bringing a sweater along with me. I want to be able to wear shorts and a t-shirt to the movies, but if I don't wear jeans, socks and shoes (I can't even wear flipflops without my feet during into ice cubes) and a hoody my ability to concentrate on watching the movie disappears and all I can think about is how cold my feet are or how the hair on my legs had to have grown 3 inches in the first 15 minutes of the movie because the goosebumps on my legs are so cold they have their own set of goosebumps. I am just sick and tired of being cold in the summer not to mention I have so many cute shorts I haven't even worn yet and it's almost the end of July.
Ok rant over. But does anyone agree with me? Or am I just a crazy heat loving psycho?
More sources on America's air conditioning epidemic and other people who think like me:
http://gawker.com/5920245/air-conditioning-makes-you-weak
http://www.wisebread.com/turn-off-your-air-conditioning
https://gimmethegoodstuff.org/bad-air-conditioning/
No comments:
Post a Comment