You could stock up on peppers. The varieties with the highest amounts of capsaicin – cayenne, green, red chili, spur or tabasco peppers – are best because this compound activates your sweat glands, and when the sweat evaporates from your skin, you cool down.

If peppers don't suit your sweet tooth, you could mix a mouth-watering cantaloupe-peach-strawberry-watermelon fruit salad. Or you could strike a balance between the hot and sweet extremes and load your pantry with vegetables that teem with water. Cucumbers, which consist of 96 percent water, and zucchini and radishes, filled with 95 percent water, are best.

People have been known to do crazier things to stay cool during the summer heat, especially if they keep their air conditioner humming along almost every summer day. For those people who love the comfort of air conditioning but don't want to go broke paying for it, rest assured: enjoying air conditioning and keeping your summer utility bills as low as possible are not mutually exclusive interests.

Put maintenance first

Take the most obvious and beneficial stride toward summer efficiency by scheduling an annual air conditioning tune-up with Experts In Your Home in Chico, CA. Buttress this effort with two other practical steps: identifying and plugging air leaks and properly insulating your home. And don't forget to make a notation on your calendar for monthly filter checks; if you're running your air conditioner frequently, you'll probably be surprised how quickly dust and dirt collect there.

Then sit back in some loose, lightweight clothing and keep a water mister nearby as Experts In Your Home fills your imagination – and your home – with other ideas that will help you keep your cool this summer, especially when your utility bill arrives.

Practical summer habits will pay off

• Raise your thermostat between 7 and 10 degrees for eight hours a day. Doing so can help you save up to 10 percent on your utility bill, the U.S. Department of Energy says. Don't forget overnight periods and those long stretches of time on weekdays and weekends when you can absorb the savings, too.
  
  
• Install a programmable thermostat so that you don't have to remember to make manual thermostat changes. You can set the temperature in your home for one day, five days or one week ahead of time, and with virtually guaranteed energy savings as you bask in the comfort of air conditioning.
  
  
• Counteract a higher indoor temperature with ceiling fans, which produce a wind-chill effect that can make you feel about 4 degrees cooler. (Ensure that the blades turn in a counterclockwise direction during the summer.) Ceiling fans will help make that 7- to 10-degree temperature modulation seem negligible in no time.
  
  
• Lighten the load of your air conditioner on the hottest, most humid summer days by waiting until it cools off at night, placing one window fan in a lower-level window to bring cool air in and placing another fan in an upper-level window to blow warm air out. Effectively ventilating a home usually requires a little practice, and it was the subject of the Experts In Your Home article “Clear the Air with 3 Basic Home Ventilation System Techniques.” Yes, it can be difficult for air conditioning aficionados to flip the “off” switch, but think of those chilly summer nights as an opportunity to give your air conditioner a break and give your home an infusion of much needed fresh air.
  
  
• Make good use of table and floor fans and especially bathroom exhaust fans, whose sole purpose is to remove heat and humidity. Gain maximum efficiency from these fans by running them for 15 minutes after you're done bathing or showering.
  
  
• Limit stove-top cooking and oven baking, which can quickly fill your home with unwanted heat in the summer. A kitchen exhaust fan can help matters, as can grilling outdoors. If you must heat up the kitchen, try to do so late in the day, once temperatures drop outdoors, and keep a ceiling fan spinning nearby.
  
  
• Keep window treatments closed during the day and/or consider installing window films that reflect heat before it can be transmitted through the glass.
  
  
• Plant deciduous shrubs and trees on the south and west sides of your home to shade it during the summer (and let the sun shine through the windows in the winter). Deciduous shrubs and trees bloom in the spring and summer, stay colorful in the fall and drop their leaves in the winter.

If you're craving a somewhat crazy, somewhat silly but legitimate way to stay cool this summer, you could always make a clever cold compress by filling a cotton sock with rice, tying it with string and freezing it overnight. Why rice? Its dense texture allows it to stay cold for an extended period of time – or until you get your next (and hopefully lower) summer utility bill.