Her trick doesn’t cost a dime and it will warm the deepest chill.
TikToker Saskia Booth (@saskiabooth) created a video about her mother’s tip.
“My mom’s technique to keeping the house warm this winter is the excess heat from the oven by leaving it open after it’s used,” she wrote.
She showed a picture of her face and then panned the camera to the open oven.
Saskia wrote “hack queen” and “gorgeous oven” as the caption.
While it might be tempting to heat your home with residual heat from the oven, Saskia’s mom may want to rethink her hack.
Or, at least, it should be done mindfully.
An oven cannot efficiently heat a large space, according to All Air Systems.
If you have a gas oven, it could be dangerous, potentially causing carbon monoxide poisoning, they said.
Using an electric oven to heat the home, however, runs less of a risk.
“Electric ovens frequently stay on for many hours at a time without adverse effects,” wrote AAS.
“High oven temperatures can heat a room, even with the door closed, though it won’t be effective in a very large space,” they added.
It’s still not without risks. Electric ovens aren’t designed to heat homes, so if they’re overused, they could malfunction and cause a fire.
That doesn’t mean people don’t do it.
One in five Americans who have an income under $30,000 — and have a gas oven — say they used that appliance to heat their home, according to a 2022 study by Consumer Reports.
Ten percent of respondents said they turned on the gas oven to provide heat to the home, even when they weren’t cooking.
Gas stoves can also be bad for your health.
Children who lived in homes where gas stoves were used for cooking were 42% more likely to have asthma, according to Harvard Health.