The Pros and Cons of Using a Wood-burning Stove

It is romantic to think about cuddling up with the love of your life in front of a blazing fire as a whirling snowstorm rages outside! The warm and comforting feeling of being with someone you love are almost unreplaceable! Do you wish you had more moments like this? I think everyone does!

On that note, I wanted to write the pros and cons of having a fireplace or wood-burning stove in your home. Growing up, we didn't have a lot of money, and one way to cut back on costs was to rely almost 100% on our wood-burning stove to heat our home. I could go on and on about the pros and cons, but I decided to list my top ones.

Pros of Using a Wood-burning Stove

1. The heat is so much warmer! Do you hate turning up your heater over and over again, and it still feels cold? When using fire to heat your home. There is no break in between of feeling cold.
2. You don't have to pay a heating bill. Any money you would have spent heating your home this winter will still be in your pocket. YAY! You may wonder about the cost of wood, but if you search on Facebook Market place for firewood, you can almost find free wood 100% of the time.
3. Never-ending ashes. If you like to garden and have a mulch pile, you will have tons of ashes from your wood-burning stove to add to your compost pile. (As with everything, too much of a good thing can be detrimental, so use caution)
4. You become an expert at lighting a fire. From a young age, I knew how to start the best fires. Every day I watched my mom light the wood stove to heat our home. Expert!
5.  It is so much fun to watch. Our original wood stove didn't have a glass door to watch the flames. When I was about ten, my parents bought a new stove with a beautiful glass door. This allowed us to watch the flames dance around the wood after the stove was going.

Cons of Using a Wood-burning Stove

1. The never-ending smell of camping. Do you love camping? I know I do! Now the real question is, do you always like to smell like you have been camping? No, thank you! Often our home would be filled with smoke because the chimney was not hot enough when starting the fire.
2. Your home can burn down. I thought this was very unlikely until my Aunts' home burned down a few years ago from having her wood stove too hot and lighting some kindling laying in a box next to the stove.
3. It can become too HOT! Often we would come inside and throw a ton of wood on the fire. Which makes the house feel like you had visited a place that is always hot that ends in two L's.  
4. It is not always convenient. It starts by picking up the wood, then unloading, chopping the wood, stacking it up, and bringing it in to burn. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as flipping on a switch and setting the temperature. 
5. Burns happen! I am surprised that my siblings didn't get burned more. I think we learned quickly that the stove gets extremely HOT! 
6. Do you like to clean? Cleaning out a wood stove is dirty and can be time-consuming. After getting a glass door, my mom would spend hours cleaning off the glass, so it wasn't always black. Let's not even mention the ashes. You might feel like Cinderella for reals.
7. It is terrible for the environment! Do you live in a place with a ton of inversion? By using a fireplace or stove, you can be fined and told you are destroying the environment... My bad!!

"Our goal is to help the world make decisions with a list of Pros and Cons. We invite all to add to our lists to help others make the most educated decision possible. We are all in this world together to help each other and learn from what others have learned from their lives journey." - Pros and Cons Team

Written By: Sarah