Buy (and use!) some hand warmers

Make going outside a little more pleasant

Some people — like my 10-year-old — seem never to be cold. I have to remind him to wear long pants when it is 25 degrees out.

Others of us, though, are constantly freezing. In particular, my fingers go numb quite quickly. This makes going outside in winter a not-so-fun experience. I’ve bought all kinds of expensive gloves and other such things over the years, but the problem is not trapping body heat. I don’t seem to generate enough body heat to trap!

I remember reading in the Little House on the Prairie books about how people would put hot potatoes, or hot stones (or similar items), into their sleighs to keep their hands and feet warm. These days we tend not to walk around with potatoes in our pockets, but it turns out there’s a modern version: the product known as HotHands (and all its competitors).

These little packets generate heat for 8 hours or so through some sort of chemical sorcery. Put them in your coat pockets and then you always have the option to stick your gloved hands in your pockets and get warmed back up.

Realizing that this product exists — and that I could bulk buy packs of them! — has completely changed my experience of winter. I went to two (outdoor) Eagles games in January last year and was able to keep my hands warm.

Now on some level perhaps this seems obvious for big outdoor events like that (though I can report that we never bought products like this growing up, and I suspect they’ve existed for a while — so maybe others haven’t known about them either!). But the real breakthrough has come from realizing that I don’t need to be going to a big outdoor event to justify using HotHands (or the generic version we sometimes buy). I can put them in my pockets for a 30-minute walk. If I do, I will take the 30-minute walk. If I don’t…I won’t. And it turns out that fresh air and exercise are mood boosters, even in winter.

I recognize that this feels a little wasteful, and I know there are reusable versions of these products too that people can avail themselves of (though if they require electricity to charge, there’s still some environmental cost). But in any case, if you, too, find yourself staying inside more than you’d like because you hate being cold, you can realize that you don’t actually have to be miserably cold. Use hand warmers and you won’t be.