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By Penny, January 20, 2010 4:00 am

Lacking a picture for the topic, here's a gratuitous picture of my mom's dogs.

I once heard someone on an inane decorating show say that curtains are the eyebrows of a room. *Snort, polite cough*

Far be it for me to argue with the champions of home décor, but I find I must in the name of practicality and frugality.
Curtains are practical tools in regulating a home’s temperature, or at least they were up until the latter part of the 20th century. Somewhere along the way, it has become far more fashionable to use them as accessories to impressing guests instead of their original purpose. Now, folks just crank up the air conditioner and heater as the weather demands, paying the inevitable bill for such largess, all the while bemoaning high energy costs. However, you can buck this trend by taking your curtains by the rods, as it were.

Invest in some lined curtains, preferably of brocade or other heavy fabric. Lose the miles of lace and gauze, as they are about as useful as a drink umbrella in a hurricane. Yes, lined curtains will be expensive, but note the use of the word “invest.” If you use them properly, you will recoup the cost of them fairly quickly. Furthermore, you might be able to sew them yourself, depending on how fancy you want them.
Make sure you are able to open and close them. The mobility of the curtains is absolutely crucial to their purpose. It is important that they are on a rod, able to be opened and closed as necessary.
In the winter, leave the curtains open during the day. Doing so will allow the sunlight to heat the room. At night, close them so that the heat is not dissipated during the lower night temperatures.
In the summer, close the windows and the curtains in the morning before the temperature begins to rise. It seems contradictory to leave the windows closed in the heat, but, with the curtains drawn, the temperature will not rise too much. Use fans to circulate the air. In the afternoon, once the outside temperature is cooler than the inside temperature, open the windows and the curtains. Use box fans to draw in cooler air. In the event you are not quite ready to forego air conditioning, just follow the instructions for the curtains.
Be creative about their placement. Sometimes there are doorways to spaces you don’t use too often in your home. Why pay to heat the laundry room if you don’t have to? In my home, we don’t use the upstairs overly much during the cold winter months. As such, we hang a heavy curtain over the doorway to the stairs, removing it once the weather becomes warmer.

Most assuredly, I will never win any awards for my home decorating skills. However, my home is comfortable year-round with little excess use of energy. Eventually, the pennies that I save on energy will help us to buy our little farm, which is a far more satisfying than being a home décor diva. Besides, in keeping with the analogy of eyebrows, the room would have to have eyes and that’s just creepy.