It has been a relatively warm and wet spring here inside the Beltway. We turned off our heat during the last week of March and decided to try and keep the AC off for as long as possible.

I was hoping to make it into June, but we had to give up on Memorial Day. It was 78 degrees in the house at eight in the morning, the high was going to get into the 90s and we were having guests that afternoon. At 10 a.m., the windows closed and summer officially started at Casa Barley.

If not for a late-fermenting batch of blueberry beer, however, we would have cranked up the AC back at the start of April. Temperatures here hit the 90s for a couple of days, and our second floor was roasting. But our basement was a perfect fermentation temperature of 65 degrees. So I refused to turn on the AC (which would have brought the basement temperature close to 80 by equalizing the temperatures in the house, thus destroying the beer), and we made it through.

The only other tough stretch would have been the last week of April. But we were in New Mexico, and I simply left the system turned off while we were gone. The house was 78 degrees when we walked in at 9:30 in the evening, but opening up the windows quickly cured that.

There is a trick to not using AC. Simply put, you open all of your windows when it is cool, and you close them when it gets warm. If it gets really cold at night (and we did have some evenings in the 40s), you simply leave everything closed up and make sure to cook supper with the oven. We spent more than a week in the middle of April with a house in the low 60s. Funny thing about that is that it still felt much warmer than the winter, when we keep our house at about 65.

You may think this opening and closing and planning and such sounds like a lot of work, but the work saves energy and, perhaps even more importantly, it saves money. When we lived in North Carolina, we installed a high-efficiency AC/heating system, and our electric bills never topped $65. We rent here in Maryland, and the system is a real watthog. Our lowest bill was $95 last July (we were gone for half of the period covered by the bill, and last July was the coolest in decades around here), and we average $150 a month.

So I was definitely looking forward to our April electric bill. I ripped it open as soon as it fell through the mail slot. My expectations were confirmed: Sixty-four bucks. I wanted to frame the sucker. Our gas bill was only $28, which is pretty normal for late spring and summer, but about $20 lower than the average April bill. All told, I figure we've saved at least $300 in utilities the last couple of months by not using heat or AC.

Nonetheless, I had to capitulate on Memorial Day and the rest of last week. The temperatures routinely hit 90, and it rained at least a little bit every day. It didn't get much below 80 some nights. As more than one weather geek said, it felt more like July 4th than Memorial Day. Bleah.

Keeping the house open was great, even considering all of the various hay fever allergies that rumble through the members of my family. The air lost that stale winter smell and instead reflected the resplendent odors of spring. And a few not-so-resplendent, but they tended to pass quickly.

The cash savings was nice. We sent in our last preschool payment at the beginning of April, and putting that together with the utility bill savings made us feel so flush that we trucked over to the local IKEA and bought some new washcloths. That's luxury right there, boys!

So closing up on Memorial Day felt like the wrong thing to do, even though sweating through nights at 85 degrees and 85 percent humidity isn't really an option. We're not eco-nazis or anything, but flipping the switch to "cool" still made me feel like I was breaking some sort of moral code. I actually agonized over the decision, even as the temperatures were giving me a direct order.

But hey, this week is supposed to be in the 70s. Time to open up again and shut down the watthog, if only for a few days. I was already missing the breeze in the living room.

Jon Worley does not like summer. Early spring and late autumn are more his speed.