I mean, start with the sourcing and stacking, right?
Our "starts" are never in the morning, it's always in the evening when the sun sets. We start the fire and RAGE IT until we go to bed. Last person to bed jams as much wood in there as possible, lowers the damper and heads to bed.
someone needs to get up to put more wood in the fire overnight. Always once, sometimes twice.
in the morning, we just rake over the coals, toss on some wood and its raging again in about an hour. When I was going to work, I would stoke it up before i left and by the time Hubby got home, there was still coals that could be used to restart the fire - or at least enough to get kindling going. But now that I'm working from home, that bad boy is going ALL DAY LONG and I am rarely ever cold.
But stoking the fire every 2-3 hours, bringing wood in and OH MY GOD THE MESS. Wood is dirty. ash is dirty and it feels like you get 90% more dust when you have a woodstove. Daily vacuuming, dusting every couple of days......commitment. but i like using one tank of oil per winter.
