The Quarter-on-the-Switch Trick for Drafty Windows

In Boston during the 2022 energy crunch, a woman named Miriam pressed a quarter against the edge of her living room light switch-and the quarter stuck straight to the wall. There was no magnet, just a sly current of icy air holding it in place. Every winter, Miriam’s heating bill had climbed by twenty bucks, and no amount of caulking her window seemed to help. It turns out, in brownstones like hers, cold air slips behind the walls and pushes right out through cracks around switches and outlets. That night, she slid a full strip of electrical tape over the switch’s plate edge, sealing it completely, and set the quarter back. This time, the coin slid right off. By morning, her living room felt two degrees warmer and the draft was gone. That one strip of tape cut her January bill by eight dollars.