My first winter in this house, the heating bill was a number that made me physically wince. I walked around touching walls and windows trying to figure out where the cold was coming from. The windows — all of them — had a steady stream of cold air pouring through the gap at the bottom of the sash. I could feel it from three feet away.

I looked up draft stoppers online. Twenty dollars each. I had eight windows. I was not spending a hundred and sixty dollars on fabric tubes. So I made my own. Total cost: about twelve bucks.

The Rice-and-Fabric Method

Measure the width of your window — or the gap under your door — and add two inches. Cut a rectangle of sturdy fabric: the width of the gap plus two inches, by about eight inches tall. Fold it in half lengthwise with the pattern facing in, sew or fabric-glue the long side and one short side, then turn it right-side out. You now have a tube with one open end.

Fill the tube about three-quarters full with uncooked rice. Rice is heavy enough to stay put and dense enough to block air. Pour it in using a funnel — or a rolled-up piece of paper if you do not own a funnel, which I did not. Leave enough empty fabric at the top to fold the raw edge inward and sew or glue it shut. That is it. One draft stopper, done.

Why Rice Beats Foam

Foam draft stoppers are light. They shift. A cat walks by and your foam tube is in the hallway. Rice-filled stoppers are heavy enough to stay where you put them. They also conform to uneven surfaces — old windows and floors are never perfectly straight — because the rice shifts to fill the gap.

A variation: fill the tube with a mix of rice and dried lavender. It blocks the draft and makes the room smell good. Just keep it away from pets and anywhere it might get wet — damp rice molds fast. For bathroom windows, use plastic pellets or aquarium gravel instead.