The Coziest I’ve Been Was While Testing Gifts for the Cold Person in Your Life

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• The Best Slippers

  If you came to me, a perpetually cold person, and asked for tips on how to stay warmer in your house, I would say to start with your feet. Don a pair of thick wool socks and then put on a pair of house slippers. I am a somewhat clumsy, as well as a perpetually cold person, so I have started to wear Xero’s Pagosa Cozy wool slippers instead of my Teva ReEmbers ($90). The fit is more snug, and the sole is thinner, so I’m more sure-footed as I sprint around my house with loads of laundry.

  The heels are designed to be stomped down so you can slip them on even quicker, and the faux shearling lining has not gotten smelly or dirty after a month or so. (I do always wear them with socks.) And at 4.8 ounces, they’re also light and slim enough to shove into a suitcase pocket (hotel rooms get cold too).

• The Best Space Heater

  • Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

  • Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

  Dreo

  Whole Room Heater 714

  You have to get your loved one a space heater because otherwise, they are sneaking around when you are not home, turning the heat up to 75 degrees, leaving you wondering why you are suddenly sweating while you’re trying to watch TV. (Look, I’m not proud of myself, but it’s a struggle to survive around here!)

  This Dreo Whole Room Heater is our top space heater pick. It’s compact, good-looking, and doesn’t tip over and won’t burn your loved one to death in their office. It swivels, not only from side to side, but also up and down, to heat the entire room. The housing remains cool to the touch, and while it’s not quite as silent as some of our other picks, it’s still quieter than a refrigerator, and the oscillation is squeak-free.

• A Little Fleece Scarf

  I love this thing. When you’re walking or biking somewhere, a full-sized scarf can be a lot to manage, but a tiny little scarflette that you can tie is just right. It’s basically a hyper-charged bandana that I can tie around my neck when I’m cold, or over my hair when it’s raining, and I can also use it to wipe rosin off my violin in a pinch!

  I also like that Skida is independent and women-owned, and its products are made in the United States. If you’re ever in any mountain town, I guarantee you will see at least six women at any given time wearing a Skida headband or hat, because the cuts are so practical and the prints so fun. I already have a Nordic running headband and a strawberry brim hat (that my daughter stole), so I’m pretty excited to add this to my collection.

• The Best Upgraded Firepit

  Photograph: Martin Cizmar

  Breeo

  X24 Series Smokeless Fire Pit

  Another weird side effect of being a perpetually cold person is that I’m also a raving pyromaniac. (Burn it all down!) Both WIRED reviewer Martin Cizmar and I have a Breeo fire pit. It has the same, purportedly smokeless, aerated design as the more popular Solo Stove fire pit, but it weighs 62 pounds and has a series of optional attachments for turning it into either a grill or a pizza oven. I’ve had mine for several years, and the patina has only improved with age. Wood burns incredibly hot and clean in this pit, and as Cizmar has noted, it’s big enough to fit full logs without having to chop them down. If your perpetually cold person also doesn’t want to come inside, this is your best option.

• Tiny Hot Cups for Sharing

  

  Photograph: Yeti

  These tiny stackable mugs from Yeti are so unbearably cute that I have a hard time looking at them. Like most of Yeti’s drinkware, they’re dishwasher-friendly and come in a wide variety of colors. The ceramic lining means that your wee splash of Fireball whiskey won’t taste metallic when you sip.

  These are perfect for stashing in a bag or jacket pocket when you just need to stop in a coffee shop and slide it under an espresso machine for a quick hot cortado. Through cold and rainy Oregon winters, I use them to make matching cups of piping hot cocoa to lure my 6- and 8-year-old out of bed every morning. (If you really want to impress the littles, get a milk frother so that milk is extra velvety.) They don’t come with a lid, but the smallest Yeti Magslider lid fits ($10 at Amazon or Yeti). These would also make great camping mugs for a niece and nephew.

• The Best Sleeping Bag

  

  Courtesy of REI

  If you’re a perpetually cold person, you are probably not camping once the temperatures drop below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. (Thirty-two degrees is when water freezes! We’re not supposed to be outside!) However, I bought both of my kids a Rumpl Wrap Sack, which is the perfect car-camping sleeping bag.

  The genius of the Wrap Sack is that it’s double-layered—you can zip yourself under one layer when you start out the night, clip on the second layer once it gets colder, or unzip the whole thing to use as a quilt if the night is warm. Both my children and I find this to be a generous, roomy sleeping solution that is a lot more comfortable than being zipped into a claustrophobic mummy bag. It was hard not to be jealous of them on a recent camping trip. The nighttime temperatures dropped past 40, and my daughter simply clipped her second layer on and went back to sleep while I was shivering in a (very old) 0-degree sleeping bag. It’s a much better solution than kicking off a backpacking quilt in my sleep.

• A Learning Thermostat

  Google

  Nest Learning Thermostat (4th Generation)

  Your favorite cold person probably checks the thermostat several times a day (guilty). After all, sometimes our thermostat’s placement doesn’t always warm up the room we actually need heated; my old thermostat used to leave my bedroom freezing, since it was using the hallway’s temperature as its gauge. The solution? The 4th-gen Google Nest Learning Thermostat and its included temperature sensor, which your cold person can place in any room. The thermostat will get that room to the perfect temperature, rather than wherever the thermostat happens to live. The thermostat is easy to set up and use, and the app will make suggestions as it learns schedules over time. Plus, it’s gorgeous to look at on the wall. —Nena Farrell

• Cozy Flannel Sheets

  

  Photograph: The Company Store

  The Company Store

  Legends Hotel Velvet Flannel Sheet Set

  Do you share a bed with your favorite perpetually cold person? Consider upgrading to cozy flannel sheets. Crisp cotton is nice in the summer, but for the winter months, your loved one wants to snuggle down into fluffed-out fibers. Bonus points if you put a hot water bottle at the foot of the bed so they don’t spend many shivery minutes waiting for their toes to heat up.

• The Best Sweater

  Finisterre

  RNLI Polperro Jumper

  If you are a perpetually cold person, you are also probably addicted to buying sweaters. Despite the fact that fisherman’s sweaters originated as sportswear, it’s really hard to find one that is both warm and stands up to heavy activity. In the weeks that I have had it, I have taken the Finisterre + RNLI Polperro sweater as my midlayer on several camping trips in the high desert and on the Oregon coast. It’s as easy to pull over my head and layer as a sweatshirt, but the 80 percent wool blend is much thicker and warmer than cotton. The 20 percent polyamide is recycled, and Finisterre also commits to other sustainable practices, like transporting by land and sea instead of by air.

• A Backyard Hot Tub

  

  Photograph: Amazon

  Intex

  PureSpa Bubble Massage Inflatable Hot Tub

  In the winter, there are days when the cold reaches down into my bones, and the only thing that helps is loads of hot water, either internally (in the form of tea) or externally (in a hot tub). For now, I visit the communal hot tubs, but I really want this for the backyard. My spouse will never put up with the amount of maintenance that a home hot tub requires, nor the inflated power and water bills. But maybe he will read this guide and reconsider. (Hi, honey!)

• The Best Tea Brewer Mug

  

  Photograph: The Tea Spot

  The Tea Spot

  Mountain Tea Tumbler

  I like coffee, too, and all hot beverages. But nothing keeps you warmer than pouring boiling hot water into a thermos. The Mountain Tumbler is an insulated, double-walled mug that has a tea basket that fits inside. You can put a few spoonfuls of any tea of your choice into the brewer basket and pour hot water over it. You can either screw the top on and let it steep or toss after a few minutes. I make tea, leave it in my car while I hike the river or stand around a playground, then sit in the car to warm up with piping hot tea three hours later. It has a specialized sipping lid, but I’ve sometimes had to take the lid off entirely to let my tea cool down, because it’s too hot. If you give this as a gift, I suggest including some tea to go along with it. It’s not one of the company’s bolder blends, but I like the chamomile from the Tea Spot.

• Books About Being Cold

  In the Kingdom of Ice

  There is nothing a cold person likes more than being warm and snuggly and reading about people who are way colder than you are and can do absolutely nothing about it. I am obsessed with Russia, Siberia, and polar expeditions, and have a whole slew of books I can recommend on the subject of people being extremely cold. (Owls of the Eastern Ice, The Worst Journey in the World, and Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube are a few that I like, if you’re curious.) But for sheer gripping terror, it’s hard to beat Hampton Sides’ history of what happened to the USS Jeannette. Imagine being just … stuck! In ice! For two years! Brrrr, glad it’s not me!

• A Heated Vest

  

  Photograph: Adrienne So

  The brand ActionHeat sent a ton of items over for consideration in this guide; I also tried the slippers (flimsy, overpriced) and the blanket (one warm spot over my crotch). It’s also annoying that all the chargers use micro USB, like it’s 2015 instead of 2025. However, I did like the heated vest very much. The heating units are slim and unobtrusive, and the battery fits nicely in a pocket. You can click between three heat settings, and one charge lasts for about four hours. It’s great for layering under my rain jacket when I really don’t want to walk my dogs or take the garbage out, or when I’m shivering at my desk and can’t quite tell why. If the battery lasted longer, I would wear this thing all day.

• The Best Gloves

  

  Photograph: The North Face

  North Face

  Etip Recycled Glove

  Every perpetually cold person has dozens of gloves, but they always need more gloves, because you’re always losing and finding gloves again. Over the years, I have tried so many pairs of gloves for hiking, biking, and snowboarding. But for everyday wear, I keep coming back to the North Face Etips. The sizing is perfect. They’re touchscreen-compatible, and the fabric is thin and stretchy enough that I can still use my hands to unzip things or manipulate my keys. For rainy weather, I also like Showers Pass knit gloves ($47), which have a membrane to keep your hands dry.

• The Best Insulated Pants

  

  Photograph: Wild Rye

  If your loved one is perpetually cold, then odds are they have many, many sweaters, hats, and vests, but not very many insulated pants. For some reason, so many of us walk around in multiple layers on our core, and none on our shivery, goose-pimpled legs. I have a few options your loved one might like. Wild Rye’s Payette Pants are made from recycled polyester and insulated with Primaloft. The soft, relaxed fit feels very fashion-forward, especially when worn with the cropped, matching Payette pullover top. Wild Rye caters to women mountain bikers who have a wide range of body types. The waist is elasticized, and while the legs are very long, they also have drawstring cuffs so you can shorten them or tuck them into boots.

  If you’re not ready to start wearing a full-on set of puffy pajamas everywhere you go (I am), Snow Peak makes insulated pants that are a little more tailored and (kind of) pass as regular work pants. I also like Eddie Bauer’s fleece-lined jeans. Or they could cut out the footbox on a sleeping bag and just walk around like that. Any port in a storm, as they say.

• A Big Old Puffer

  

  Photograph: Chris Haslam

  Fjällräven

  Expedition Down Lite Jacket

  Finally, there are some days when nothing but the biggest jacket you own will do. This Fjällräven parka is based on a design from 1974 with a few modern updates, like synthetic fill around the shoulders to prolong the life of the goose down when you get snowed or rained on. The hood is big enough to hide in and the polyamide outer has a PFAS-free DWR and is 100 percent recycled, as is the liner. The pockets are also huge, for warming up your hands and whatever accessories you may be peeling on and off. If you gifted this to your loved one, they would never be cold again and would bless you forever.

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