Life Hack: Three useful tips to help keep you feeling fresh and cool during a heatwave

From evaporative cooling to cooling your drinks, here are a few tricks to make the warm weather more bearable

These three hacks will make the heat feel less oppressive

Keeping yourself cool 

Feeling clammy and uncomfortable? For many, a heatwave feels unbearable but there are some simple ways to make yourself feel better. If you’re struggling to sleep at night without the relief of a cold pillow under your head, there’s an almost-too-obvious solution: freeze your pillowcase. Some people swear by freezing their pillow but realistically, who has that much space in the freezer between the ice creams and frozen pizzas? Instead, pop the pillowcase into a plastic bag and place it into the freezer for 10 minutes, remove it and return it to your pillow. The accelerated freezing effect will feel like such a relief. If you think you’ll wake in the night due to the heat, however, keep a backup pillowcase in the freezer so you can replace the now-warm one.

Keeping your house cool 

Irish houses are designed to hold in heat so when the temperature climbs, we often feel too hot. There are a few easy ways to make your home environment much more bearable. You can hang a bed sheet over an open window and spritz it with water from a spray bottle. This will create ‘evaporative cooling’, a technique that uses evaporated water to cool hot air and lower the temperature in a room. It’s the same effect that was used by ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, who hung wet clothes in front of openings to create a cooling breeze. Another way is to make the most of any fan you might already own. Place a bowl full of ice in front of a fan. The fan will start to blow cooler air thanks to the presence of the ice. This second option is great if you’re working at a desk or sitting somewhere near the fan and ice combo to feel the full impact.

Keeping your drinks cool 

There’s no relief on a hot day quite like drinking an ice-cold glass of lemonade (or your preferred beverage). If you have the drink but forgot to store it in the fridge before you went to imbibe it, you can cool it to a chilled temperature quickly in a number of ways. One method is to immerse the bottle or can in some salted iced water. The salt affects the ice cubes by breaking them down quicker, causing more ice-cold water into the mixture. This cools the drink placed in the water in just a few minutes – as little as two minutes for some savvy internet experimenters. Another technique involves soaking some tissue in cold water and wrapping it around the can or bottle before storing it in the freezer. Remove it after 15 minutes and unwrap the tissue to find a perfectly chilled beverage waiting to be consumed.