Beat the Heat

A timely prompt for this Tuesday that is in the midst of our 4th heat wave so far this summer…10 ways to beat the heat!

Farm Stand Flowers from early morning errands

• Drink plenty of water – My S’well water bottles are used just about every day of the year. During these heat waves, an extra bottle is in the car with me no matter how short the run.
• Batch food prep/oven use – Turn on the oven once & do as much as you can in as little time as you can. On Sunday, food prep included an early morning oven run & an early evening oven run – and viola, food stuffs for 6+ meals this week were ready to go!
• Run cold water over your wrist pulse points – I first read about this years ago when I lived in Chicago with only 2 window AC units in my apt. Even now, I do this before I go to bed as well as if I’m up during the night.
• Avoid errands in the heat of the day – On Saturday I was up before 7am & so I pulled together my errand list for the day and was at Target as they opened – my list was finished & I was home well before the worst of the heat descended on the day.
• Eat lighter – Farm stand produce is prime these days…making it very easy to have all the tasty fixin’s for all sorts of great salads!
• All the iced drinks – While iced tea and iced coffee are in frequent rotation year round for me, even more is consumed in weather like this – although I do make sure to balance these with water! On Sunday & Monday, iced candy cane coffee was a bit of Christmas in July!
• Take in a movie in a well chilled cinema – I was more current on summer blockbusters when I lived in my last Chicago apartment…many a Saturday afternoon was spent at a theater.
• Splash your face – Whenever I’m at my bathroom sink here at home, I take a moment to liberally spray my face with my favorite rosewater tonic – just a moment and so refreshing!
• Be grateful – In the midst of the seemingly extreme temperatures, take a moment to be thankful that we live in a time and place where we have so many options to help us pull through the heat waves.
• Take a mental snapshot – Capture the heat in a memory for those snowy and bone chilling cold sorts of winter days that have you wondering if warmer temps will ever return. And remember, to everything there is a season…

The forecast shows that later this week this heat wave may break with a high of 88 on the horizon. In the meantime, many of these tactics (and more!) are in rotation to keep the heat at bay – as best as possible.

What do you do to beat the heat?

Linking up with Carole for Ten on Tuesday.