If you’re not careful about keeping your home cool in the summer, your property can easily heat up past a comfortable temperature for you and your family. But with smart or thoughtful habits and routines, it’s easy for you to keep your home cool.

To help you see how this can be done, here are three habits that will help you keep your home cooler in the summer months. 

Conduct Routine A/C Maintenance

If you have an air conditioner for your home, it’s vital that you conduct routine maintenance on your air conditioner unit to ensure that it’s always running as effectively and efficiently as possible. 

While you should have a professional look at your a/c unit each year, Melina Gillies, a contributor to the Family Handyman, shares that you should also keep your a/c unit clean and free of debris outside of your home. Along with this, you should also replace your return air filter every few months. By taking all of these measures, your air conditioner will function better and will help you to keep your home cool without having to put so much energy and money toward it. 

Use Appliances After Dark

Another way you can keep your home from getting too hot in the summer is to be strategic about when you use certain appliances that produce a lot of heat. 

According to Andrea Murad, a contributor to Fox Business, using things like your dishwasher and your clothes dryer can produce a lot of heat within your home. So if you’re needing to use these appliances, try to only turn them on after the sun has gone down. And in instances where you can find another alternative, like using a clothesline to try your clothes rather than putting them in the dryer, you might want to try those types of options as well. 

Cook Outside

Cooking inside your home can also cause a lot of heat to be produced that can really spike the temperature in your space. 

To combat this, Jeremy Anderberg, a contributor to the Art of Manliness, suggests that you try to cook outside as much as possible when trying to keep the temperature inside your home low. By avoiding using things like your oven, stove, or microwave, you can cut down on a lot of the radiant heat that would otherwise fill your home. So if you don’t already have a grill or outdoor cooking area, you might want to invest in one of these. 

If you’ve been looking for some easy ways to keep your home cooler in the summer, consider implementing some of the habits mentioned above.