Draft Dodgers and Aimless Wandering

Friday I wandered aimlessly around the house. I always clean house on Fridays in preparation for teaching yoga in my living room on Saturday morning, but the house was remarkably clean so there wasn't much to do. I wandered about, puttering really while my laundry ran in the washer. I hang all my laundry out on a line (we don't even own a dryer) and it just seemed like I was sitting around waiting to hang it out. Usually, I "multi-task" ( and I know it isn't really multi-tasking to do something while the washer runs, but I AM doing two things at once). Finally, I decided to finish a project I had been thinking about and had barely started a few days before.

Despite our efforts the Round House is still very drafty. Built in '75, she's settled a bit and there is a huge gap under the front door. Because there is a high spot in the floor we can't use one of those flimsy, stick-on plastic weather strips so, I decided to go "old school" and make a draft dodger. I read a few sets of instructions on the 'net, thinking I might be missing something because it seemed all too simple. Most suggested a fabric tube filled with sand...well, my little OCD-self could not handle the thought of there being only one, thin layer of cotton fabric between my clean floors and SAND!! What to do?

I don't throw away much of anything until it proves to me that it is truly useless. I went to my fabric bag full of plastic produce bags (actually only lettuce gets a bag, as it stays fresher longer that way) and plastic bread sacks and hatched a plan. Fabric tubes, with sand filled plastic bags was more acceptable, putting one more layer between my floors and that sand.

Some instructions if you think you might want to make these:

1. Measure doors
2. decide how thick you want your dodgers
3. cut fabric twice as wide as you want the dodger and fold it in half
4. sew one end and the long side
5. find some sand (they sell it for sandboxes, but we had some leftovers from a sidewalk behind the garage)
6. slip the bag inside your fabric tube and fold the plastic over the edge of the fabric
7. fill with sand
8. tie off the top of the bag
9. shake it down to the bottom of the tube
10. Repeat steps 6-9 (it took five bread bags to fill my dodgers)
11. NOTE: don't fill the bags with sand BEFORE putting them in the fabric sleeve they will be too big and will not be forced down that tube...trust me, learn from me, I promise it won't work unless your fabric tube is at least as large as the bread bag or larger and that would be some big draft dodger)

I don't know how useful this will be. Hopefully, your house is tighter than ours. We did new insulation, wrapped it in Tyvek-type stuff, put up new siding, and added new-to-us windows and this place is still cold and drafty...could be part of the design?