One of the best things about winter (now there's a sentence I never thought I'd say) is that it's when my family cranks up the wood stove. After a long summer, which towards the end starts to feel like an obligation to the outdoors, it's almost nice to feel the air start to crisp up in late October. Obviously it isn't nice all the time; when your feet almost freeze to the bathroom floor after a shower is about when I start to really feel like it should only be cold outside, not inside.

My family doesn't heat with a central heating system, or whatever they're called. The fact that I have no idea what they're called is really indicative of how much I've used one. We heat with a wood stove. Yes, it is a lot of work. You have to stoke the fire, and add wood every hour or so to make sure it never loses so much heat that the next logs won't ignite. You also have to stack a huge amount of wood during the summer, so that it will properly dry out and be close enough to the house to bring in when it's very snowy out.

However, I have never found a better way to heat than a wood stove. It has a great aesthetic, and makes the house feel very homey and comfy when you can see the fire flickering from upstairs. There isn't often a time when there isn't a fire going in our house. It gives a very warm light to the room, and a kind of expanding heat that vents don't often achieve.

I also find that a lot of people suffer from very dry skin in the winter, my mother and sister included. I don't, but it seems like almost everyone else in the state does. It seems like wood stoves help a little bit with that! With central heating, hot air blows directly into the rooms through vents. With a wood stove, there isn't any airflow going into multiple rooms all at once. The heat results from a very hot object that radiates enough heat to have much of the space around it be warm, rather than a fan-like circulation of heat. This makes it so there's less constantly dry air blown around, which helps keep people who are prone to dry skin from drying up quite so much.

The best thing about having a wood stove is that it costs way less than having an electric or propane-powered heating system. The amount that you spend on wood is hundreds less than you'll pay for a full winter's worth of heat. Though it is obviously a lot more work intensive, it creates a really nice atmosphere in the house and is a lot cheaper to keep up year after year than a central heating system run by fossil fuels or electricity.