Plastic, tape and a hairdryer for what????

One of my good friends now lives in Japan and every time we trade emails there are always little cultural things that pop up that surprise me. Things that are just taken as the way it is and never really talked about. Like that fact that ALL the doors in his school are left open all winter long. It’s just the custom. Apparently the teacher’s lounge with it’s closed door and kerosene heater is a really popular place on cold days. Most homes in his area are not insulated, only have maybe one thin pane of window glass and are heated by small kerosene heaters in the middle of living rooms. And yes, they get quite a bit of snow sometimes. Brr.

Well, here’s something I thought I’d share with folks in warmer climates that they might have no clue about.

If you are from anywhere in Canada I’m guessing you know exactly what these three items are used for this time of year. A couple of rolls of double sided tape, a sheet of thin plastic and a hairdryer. If you’re from some place a little warmer I can only image the confusion. Well, up here it’s our cheap white trash window insulation when the weather gets really cold and our windows are crappy and drafty. Honestly.

It’s almost like a ritual on the first day it hits lower than –20 degrees, folk’s up and down the street get out the hairdryer and go to work. First you put the double-sided tape all around the window casing. This is usually the easy part. Then you remove the second side of the sticky tape. If you have kids or animals it starts getting a little tricky keeping them from the now sticky tape that wants to stick every hair, fur-ball and shirt sleeve it can.

Next you unroll and prepare the plastic. It’s kind of like the most unfriendly saran wrap you’ve ever tried to use. It sticks to itself, it doesn’t want to unfold, it doesn’t want to unroll, it wants to pick up ever piece of dust, it wants to stick to you, it wants to try to kill you. Then you TRY to get this to stick to the tape with as few wrinkles as possible. Of course the plastic has quite a mind of it's own and sticks in random spots on the tape, folds over on it's self and comes undone in vital key sticking points. Once you get it up and fairly flat and unwrinkled the easy part starts. You take you hairdryer, hold it about ¼ of an inch away from the plastic and slowly heat it so it stretches to a tight film. Leave it in one spot too long and you get a hole (and have to start all over again with a new sheet of plastic) and if you don’t heat it enough and it won’t tighten up and is pretty much useless as insulation. (And looks bad too)

Once it’s up it actually doesn’t look that bad if you’ve done an OK job of installing it, (most people don’t) and it does stop drafts and does keep in the heat a little better. Just a little piece of Canada for you guys from other, and slightly warmer climates.