6 frugal ways to beat the brutal heat

As temperatures routinely hit triple digits, here are half a dozen cheap ways to keep cool, even without air-conditioning. The house I currently live in was built on the outskirts of Milwaukee in 1941–which means it does not have central air-conditioning. In the ten years we’ve lived here, the lack of A/C has only bothered us for about two weeks every August. We can power through those hot, sticky days with window air conditioners in each of the three bedrooms, and before we know it, we’re back to complaining about the snow.