Sleeping in the cold

We sleep in the cold pretty much every night in the winter. You see, the bedroom my husband and I share is on the lower level of our house. This would mean chillier temperatures down there no matter what, but the downstairs of our house tends to be especially chilly because the thermostat is upstairs, just down from the kitchen(which often exudes warmth, due to my baking habit). I can’t tell you how wonderful this is in the summertime, but in the chillier months, the cool temperatures down there are not so welcome(it was 59 degrees in there when we headed to bed last night).

To make sleeping a little more comfortable in the winter, we bought a set of flannel sheets from L.L. Bean, and also a down comforter. I use the word “bought” loosely, though, because we hardly paid anything for them. I got the sheets after I had applied for a new Discover card, which was offering a $60 bonus reward. And, there was a $15 bonus if I redeemed the $60 in the form of L.L. Bean gift cards, so I got $75 of gift card money. That meant a free set of fuzzy flannel queen sheets for us! Yay!

Then there was the matter of our comforter. We had a cheapish comforter, which didn’t keep us that warm. So, we’d been wanting to upgrade to something toastier, but we just didn’t have the money.

However, last year about this time I noticed that there was a very good deal going with my Citi card reward points. Usually a person would need 10,000 points to get a $100 gift card, but only 9,000 points were needed for a $100 L.L. Bean gift card. So, I saved up the points from both our Citi cards and got $200 of L.L. Bean money by the time spring rolled around. I coupled that with a $25 gift card or two from my Discover Gas credit card and got us a comforter for about $9 out of pocket. Whee! I love my credit card rewards.*

Doesn’t it look delightfully fluffy??

Then my dear younger brother gave me that he had a white duvet cover and bedskirt that he really didn’t need, so now I have my bed all covered in shadow-striped whiteness, and it cost me nothing.

With the combination of the new sheets and the new comforter, our bed is wonderfully warm. In fact, I sometimes wake up in a bit of a sweat, which is a nice problem to have in our bedroom.

*It should be noted that we only use our credit cards for budgeted purchases and we always pay the entire balance off every month. This means the rewards we get are basically free money. And as a disclaimer, I would never recommend this approach to anyone who has had problems being disciplined with credit cards. If you have trouble staying out of credit card debt, paying with cash will be much more valuable to you than any credit card rewards program.