The house was beautiful and impossible in equal measure. Twelve-foot ceilings with original plaster medallions. Heart pine floors worn smooth by generations of feet. Windows with wavy glass that made the street outside look like a watercolor. Also: radiators that clanked violently at 3am, a kitchen sink that drained slow, and enough drafts to flutter candles across the room.

My first winter, the gas bill was $340. For a two-bedroom cottage. I panicked, then got practical.

The Windows That Humbled Me

Those beautiful wavy-glass windows? Absolutely terrible for insulation. I spent November trying to weatherstrip them. The wooden frames were so warped from 130 years of settling that nothing fit properly. I bought fancy adhesive strips—they fell off within days. I tried the plastic shrink-wrap method—looked awful and barely helped.

Sarah from the cottage next door watched me struggle for two weeks before coming over with heavy curtains. "This is what actually works," she said. "The house is gonna leak heat no matter what you do. You just reduce where you can and heat the rooms you're using."

It was embarrassing advice to need. I'd wanted solar panels and smart thermostats. Instead, I got heavy curtains and learned to close doors.

Living sustainably in these old houses isn't about fixing everything. It's about learning which battles matter and which ones you just live with. —  Sarah, neighbor and voice of reason

The Compost Experiment

I started composting in March with high hopes and a bin from the hardware store. Week one: perfect. Week two: fruit flies. Week three: a smell that made me question every life choice. Turns out "green and brown materials in balance" is harder than YouTube makes it look.

Tom, who's been in the Ravenswood cottage for six years, came by to help. "You're overthinking it," he said, poking through my overly-wet mess. "Too many coffee grounds, not enough leaves. And you need to turn it more than once a month."

He brought me a bucket of dry leaves from his yard. We fixed the ratio, turned the pile, added some soil. Within two weeks, the smell was gone. Within two months, I had actual compost. Dark, crumbly, earth-smelling stuff that made my tomato plants explode.

I tell people I compost now, but I don't mention the fruit fly month or the fact that Tom still troubleshoots my bins when things go wrong.

What Actually Changed

A year in, my habits shifted in small ways. I stopped buying paper towels because we had a drawer full of old kitchen towels Sarah gave me. I started shopping at the Parkersburg farmers market because it was closer than the grocery store and the produce lasted longer. I learned to fix the radiator's pressure valve instead of calling the landlord every time it hissed.

None of this was ideological purity. It was just what made sense for living in an old house in a small town with neighbors who knew things I didn't.

The electric bill is still higher than I'd like—those ceiling heights and single-pane windows guarantee it. But I brought it down to around $180 in winter by heating only the rooms I use and wearing sweaters like Tom suggested. Revolutionary.

What We're Learning Together

Our little cluster of SILK cottages has become an accidental education in making do. We share tools, troubleshoot each other's composting disasters, swap produce from our gardens. When Emma's fridge died in July, she kept perishables in Sarah's fridge and mine until she could afford to replace it. When my kitchen sink finally backed up completely, Tom came over with a snake and fixed it while explaining what tree roots do to century-old pipes.

This is what sustainable living looks like for us: not perfect systems or zero-waste Instagram aesthetics, but neighbors who share what they have and know how to fix what breaks. We're not saving the planet. We're just figuring out how to live in old houses without going broke, and helping each other when things go sideways.

My compost still gets too wet sometimes. The windows still leak cold air. I still overbuy at the farmers market and have to figure out what to do with eight pounds of kale. But the house is warmer because I learned to work with it instead of against it. And I'm less alone in it because fixing problems together turns neighbors into friends.

That's probably the most sustainable thing I've learned: you can't do it by yourself, and you don't have to.

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