) is around 45-50% for a healthy house, that means you're not drying out and you're not growing mould in the corners either. My place is small, I keep an old breadpan full of warm water on the woodstove, A big pot of soup or stew if the powers out, if its really cold out and I have to crank up the fire I'll hang some wet laundry by the fire (generally not a problem with a kid and snow/muck outside ), big thick towels work very well for overnight, even leaving the bathtub water in for a while (that can be kinda gross though, especially if the otters take a swim in it). I notice pretty quick if it gets too dry in here, its like a dustmite festival, I am not beyond splashing a cup or two of hot water on the stove-top in rather primitive fashion for instant extra humidity. Home humidifiers are cheap and do their job, fancy ones will monitor levels but so will a barometer. I hated the one my dad used in the 70's, noisy and he always added that weird smelling green devil juice to the water 'for the fresh smell' guck, bletch, smelled like the subway washrooms in TO., yuck. At one point we had a humidifier system hooked into the furnace (oil I think) and have fond memories of my pop pulling out sheets of rusted out guts of furnace and inventing a few choice words doing so while the furnace guy rubbed his hands together.
