Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

It’s no secret that the summer months can be absolutely brutal when it comes to heat, and this is why we turn on the AC to help us cope with extremely warm temperatures.
But what if you don’t have an AC or it isn’t working? Does this mean you’re all out of luck? Not at all. There are many ways you can keep yourself cool without AC.
Here are ten ways to stay cool when you don’t have an air conditioner:
1. Cover Your Windows
Could it really be this simple? Can closing your blinds and curtains really help cool down your home? The truth is it very well can, especially if you have blackout curtains. (Here's how to make your own.)
Almost a third of all heat in your home comes from your windows, and by covering them up you’ll be able to lower overall temperatures in your home by twenty degrees or more. Be sure to reopen your blinds after the temperatures outside have started to drop a little.
2. Open Your Windows At Night
The nighttime temperatures are always cooler, including during the summer, so opening your windows at night will bring much badly needed cool air into your house and help you sleep better.
You can also utilize the cross breeze concept by setting up your fans to strategically create a wind tunnel, which will guarantee that you’re getting lots of cool air throughout the night.
3. Cook Outside
The interior temperature of your house will always go up dramatically by cooking inside. By doing most of your cooking outside instead, such as grilling, you’ll naturally keep the temperature of your home down.
Besides, summer time is the season for grilling anyway, so you’re getting more benefits out of this besides just one. If you don’t own a grill yet, get on that!
4. Drink Lots Of Ice Water
Staying hydrated is something you should be doing anyway, but drinking plenty of ice water will do much to help you cool down. It’s generally recommended that you drink a minimum of two liters of water per day to stay hydrated, which will help you feel more energetic and guard you against headaches.
Meanwhile, the ice cold fluids flowing throughout your body will help make you feel cool even if it’s over a hundred degrees outside. Keep in mind, you don’t have to only drink water. You can also drink other cool beverages such as lemonade, juice, or soda.
5. Invest In Lots Of Fans
You’re specifically going to need some small battery powered fans so you can run them even without power and electricity. Contrary to what many people think, fans don’t actually cool the temperature of the air. Rather, they just move the air around. But this creates a cooling effect on your skin.
Battery powered fans are not very expensive and you can set up lots of them throughout the house. The most strategic places to keep your fans will be the halls and near the windows so you can create a cross breeze where you draw cool air inside and then push the warm air outside. But for this, you'll want a larger battery powered fan.
6. Seal Off the Warmest Rooms
Everybody has that one room that is always hot. This is usually because it has at least two outside walls, a couple of windows, and no shade. If you have a room like that, close it off from the rest of the house.
Shut the door, cover the cracks with towels or blankets, and put a door sweep below the door. This will stop cooler air from getting out.
7. Invest In A Cooling Pillow
While they can be costly, there are specific pillows marketed as ‘cooling pillows’ that can actually help keep your head cool while you sleep. By keeping your head cool, you’ll be able to keep the rest of your body cool as well.
Another option is a simple cooling pillow mat. It uses a macro-molecule cooling gel to keep your head cool. It's also great for fevers, headaches, and night sweats.
8. Freeze Your Blankets and Sheets
A DIY way to help make yourself stay cool at night will be to place your sheets in the freezer for a couple of hours and place them on your bed before you go to sleep. The sheets will actually preserve their chilliness for longer than you would expect and will do much to help you stay cool.
9. Buy An Awning
It’s amazing how just a little bit of shade can help keep temperatures dramatically down, and the benefit of an awning is that it can help lower temperatures both inside and outside.
It will keep the temperatures down in the specific room that it’s next to, and even when you go outside, the temperatures will be a few degrees lower directly underneath the awning than not under it.
10. Put A Cool Compress Over Your Forehead
As I said above, one of the best ways to lower your overall body temperature will be to lower the temperature of your head. And perhaps the easiest way to accomplish this is to put a cool compress on it.
Soak a bandana or a similar cloth in cold water and then apply it directly to your forehead. Lay back and try to rest, and allow the compress to work its magic.
Conclusion
Staying cool is something all of us strive to do in the blistering hot summer months. The main advantage to each of the methods we have covered in this article is how they can be done without spending much money while still making you feel like you have the AC on.
I live in the deep south and it gets very hot and muggy around here. One of my favorite ways to stay cool is to rub myself with a cloth that is soaked with rubbing alcohol. The more alcohol the better (I prefer the 91 percent isopropyl alcohol. The alcohol evaporates very quickly, and leaves behind a cooling effect. Just watch out around your face, the alcohol fumes can burn the eyes and nose.
Anyway, I love the articles, I get a push notification on my chromebook every time one comes out.
Something else that wasn’t mentioned, keep frozen gallons of water in your deep freezer. Place them in front of a fan, and its your own personal air conditioner. Don’t forget to place a towel under ice jug to absorb condensation. 😉
To enlarge on #10 and the bandana: Change the bandana for a towel or t-shirt. The t-shirt will keep you cooler if you have to be out and about and the towel can be used at night to cool the body so you can sleep. I have read that before AC, people would open the window and drape a sheet over it. The bottom of the sheet was in a pan of water. As the air comes thru the sheet it is cooled down and the pan insures that it does not dry out right away.
These ideas are good IF YOU HAVE ELECTRICITY. No electricity= no fans and no ice. Rolling black-outs…how long do they last? This article was more for your central air conditioning unit died…
These ideas are very good. Might just try them for here. Australian summers can and do get very hot to boiling.
The temperatures leading up to the Black Saturday bushfires were 45 degrees plus. with very little to no wind.
Ideas 7 ,8 and 9 are intriguing.