Ingenuity

Or as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

For the last few months, I've been under the assumption that my upstairs neighbors were still the father and teenage daughter.  I haven't seen them recently, but I hadn't noticed them moving out either.  It could have happened around Thanksgiving when I wasn't home.  Or it could have happened in mid December when I was in Minnesota.  But I also never saw anyone move IN.

After staying up WAY too late last night (actually this morning), I was expecting to be able to sleep until at least noon.  I woke up about 8:30 and decided to move to the recliner.

After sleeping for about another hour or so, in the middle of a dream, I was awakened by lots of people going up and down the stairs, obviously moving someone out of the building.  I eventually gave up at going back to sleep and got up and semi-dressed.

With all that noise in the hallway, I figured it would be pointless to turn the t.v. on.  Just too much noise.  As I shrugged off a chill, I started wondering why I should be chilly.  Then I realized, if they are moving all that furniture out, that means they have the front door open to all that cold air (It's currently 28F with 20+ mph gusty winds).

The reason I was cold was because I have about a quarter inch gap between my door and the door jam on the top and side.  The cold air was leaking into my apartment through that gap.  Not knowing how long they were going to be keeping that door open, I decided I needed to do something to stop the flow of cold air.

My first thought was, what can I jam into that gap to block it? But I quickly figured out that would be difficult to do not only down the whole side of the door, but on top too.

*Light bulb moment*

I have blue painters tape!  I can just "seal" off those two sides of the door and it should hold well enough to keep the cold air from coming through!

It won't save me from an infectious disease outbreak, but it sure did the trick for cold air.  Very little is coming through and I won't have to worry about being cold or turning up the heat to compensate.

I think it looks nice, don't you?