To Form a Habit

We have a room off of the back of the house, off the kitchen, that was built on by the previous owners. I understand it is called a "Florida" room. This is interesting to me because it only feels like Florida out there in the middle of summer here, which seems very unhelpful to me. Anyway.

The Florida room is where Eric decided to put the corn stove he built a few years ago to assist in the heating of our house. The stove heats water which then runs in lines through our furnace which pulls the heat out of the water and pumps it through our vents. He is working on getting more and more of the heat from the stove into the water lines, but because it really heats, the result is that the Florida room, when the stove is running, is toasty warm. When it is not running, you might as well be outside in that room.

Because of a redesign of the water tank, the stove has not been operational this fall/winter. Thus, once it got cold, my mantra began: "shut the office door" (Eric has his office out there). "Shut the door". "Don't forget to shut the door!" And etc. We keep most of the winter coats and boots out there because they were too big and bulky to be in the pantry, so every time they were getting their snow gear on, they had to be out in that room. "SHUT THE DOOR!"

So this past weekend, Eric got the corn stove going. Ahhhhhhh. And now the Florida room is warm. However, if you leave the door shut to the Florida room, it starts to feel like the equator out there and we don't get any of that great residual heat for the house. So -- you can see this coming, right? -- now that 3 months of constant repitition has finally sunk in, I have spent the last 3 days doing a 180: "open the door!" "Don't forget to leave the door open!" Jesse, who always takes the longest to remember a "rule", had just started shutting the door with consistency, oh, about last week.

Childhood can be so confusing.