We have a wood stove and a electric central heating and air conditioning system, plus some little electric space heaters (some ceramic), and one big electric fake “fireplace”. The electric fake “fireplace” had to be abandoned because it just ate electricity prohibitively. It’s cute, but not practical. - We close the doors to the upstairs rooms, leaving them cracked just enough in the bathroom at the head of the stairs especially to keep the pipes from freezing. We use the woodstove as an adjunct to the central system, which we keep set on about 66 with the woodstove running on slow burning wood most of the time. Along with the central system set at 66, it never gets really cold in the house - AND the woodstove keeps the floor above it warm and toasty in that bedroom where husband does some limited work. The little space heaters we use in a very limited way, exercising safety precautions with them; the wood stove, too, being careful to use soot removing logs and sweeping the pipes with a wire chimney sweeper. Even if we have to buy a bit of firewood one day, it’s still good auxiliary heat and dependable if we should have a power outage (which we have had lasting days in the past). - We also wear enough clothes in the house that we don’t feel like we have to jack the temp setting up to try to be like Florida in order to be comfortable. I think we sleep better at night if it is not ramped up on high heat or the woodstove ripping and tearing. - Getting up and keeping the circulation working in the body is also a good thing. Our electric bill, including everything else, has always been very reasonable.
Oh, and yeah, we also use room-darkening, insulated pull-down shades over our miniblinds, especially at night. Any time we can pull back curtains, shades or blinds and allow the sun to shine in and heat the rooms, we do. - I’m no expert, as you can tell I’m sure - but, we do live cheap and not spoiled to ipsy pipsy comfort. - Oh, and when I use the electric oven, I don’t waste the heat from that when I turn it off, I open the oven door a bit to allow that heat to join in the party. We also use light bulbs to heat up and dogs’ houses outside and a small space heater set on very low to heat up the cat room which is also furnished with a very padded enclosed cat bed. Having hairy pets is also helpful. One dog has a very heavy winter coat, while the one which does not has to be sort of coddled. The cat has a Persian daddy and a very full long coat winter and summer. - We also keep a bit of firewood inside so that we don’t have to run in and out. The doors are kept pretty much shut, but it is important to allow enough fresh air to keep from getting carbon monoxide built up. (We also have a carbon monoxide alarm; which came in handy the one time it went off due to the woodstove door being a bit ajar. That one time did two things, it made the alarm cost well worth the fifty or so dollars we paid for it, and it made us become very aware of shutting the stove door good every time we put wood in it.
Oh, Yep. Hot air rises. Cold air stays low. That’s why in winter, we shut upstairs doors pretty much so the hot air stays downstairs, and in summer we keep them wide open so that the hot summer air from downstairs can freely rise upstairs. We live downstairs, even sleep down there.