What is the actual humidity level?

No on the silica packets. Super expensive in the condition you describe. I'm with sktn77a.

Winter is for most locations a dry event or lack of humidity. So if you have humidity problems in winter the better idea would be to determine where the humidity is coming from.

You can however, throw all kinds of money at gadgets and or equipment to deal with the problem. A dehumidifier is an option, but you never quit paying for one of those once you take that path.

What type of heating system do you have? If I had to guess it is a single pipe steam system and the air vents are opening or a regular basis.

Running the bathroom fan 24/7 is not going to lower the humidity in my opinion.

If you have a tight house, your moisture might be from people breathing. Opening the windows for a brief period might work. The other things is that if your windows are single-pane with no storm windows, and get very cold, then that might be the source of your problem. You can get very cheap kits to put plastic over the indide of your windows. It's not beautiful, but it would certainly tell you if the problem is just the heat differential and you need new windows or storm windows.

Humidity meters are super cheap. You can get them on-line for under $20. I'd start there. I'd get a few and measure where the humidity is the worst.

If you have a crawl space that doesn't have any rubber under it and damp winters, the dampness might be coming from there.

Do you run the fan during showers and while cooking anything that has liquid in it?

Consumer Reports Dehumidifier Reviews and Ratings ($10/month digital)

Hi all thanks for the ideas, keep em coming,

The heating system is natural gas furnace/heat pump, forced air.

Our windows/doors are fairly new and the house is pretty tight.

We do run the exhaust fans when cooking/bathing/showering.

I have a dehumidifier in the basement but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the 3rd floor. It would be difficult to install on the 3rd floor because of a lack of outlets but I think that's what I'll have to do.

Installing a humidity meter or two is a good idea. I'll try that today. Seeing the numbers might at least convince my wife to stop the humidifier in the kids room at night!

Get some portable dehumidifiers. We finished our new build, custom home on the PNW coast a little over a year ago. Builder promised we wouldn’t need dehumidifiers, but he was wrong. We are on the edge of a national rain forest and a 10 minute walk to the beach. The rainy season started 2 weeks after we moved in and suddenly our floors started having buckling type issues. Builder quickly brought in a commercial dehumidifier while we waited for the ones we ordered to arrive. After a couple of months the floors got completely flat again. We have humidity sensors in every room through our thermostats. (We have in wall cadet heaters in each room, they each have their own thermostats. We do not have AC or a central system) Anyways, we’ve run those dehumidifiers every day since. We are in our rainy season again and we’ve noticed that we aren’t struggling to hold optimum humidity this season anymore. They’re still running, but we are able to go days without needing to empty the reservoir, where last year this time it was more than once per day. We have one on each floor. We believe that because our house was being framed in the rainy season that it was just too wet, and though the builder said it was fine and he used heaters and dehumidifiers and took moisture measurements and all that and said everything was fine... it wasn’t. We should have listened to our nextdoor neighbor, her house has been here for decades and she has to constantly run dehumidifiers too, but her house is far from airtight, so we assumed the builder was right. Sigh. We wish we had designed it for in wall dehumidifiers. We are planning to add them when we can, but we aren’t sure how best to do it on one of our floors because there’s not a good spot for it. Darn. Anyways, I shudder to think of the problems we’d have now if we didn’t have at least the portable units.

...heating system is natural gas furnace/heat pump, forced air

Our windows/doors are fairly new and the house is pretty tight.

...might at least convince my wife to stop the humidifier in the kids room at night!

Given this new information I am fairly confident the humidifier in the kids room is the cause of the excess humidity. Are you able to go into the attic? If you are I suggest you go up there and see how much moisture is being trapped. If the attic ventilation is not sufficient, you will have a long term moisture problem in the attic that will eventually be very expensive to correct.

Before you spend money installing an new outlet, buying a humidifer, and paying the extra electricity cost, buy a good hygrometer. Measure the humidity level in various parts of the house. A humdifity level of 40-45% is comfortable in my opinion.

You should also consider adding a whole house humidifer to the furnace and eliminating the humidifer in the kids room.

Winter is for most locations a dry event or lack of humidity. So if you have humidity problems in winter the better idea would be to determine where the humidity is coming from.

lol.

Seeing the numbers might at least convince my wife to stop the humidifier in the kids room at night!

The humidity is coming from inside the house.

Something is bliss and it appears this house hold has it in spades.

"When you find yourself in a hole, put down the shovel -- stop digging." ~probably someone who found themselves in China after awhile.

Oh yeah... dang... stop running a humidifier. Get something to check the levels.

If you are having problems with too much humidity why in the world are you running humidifiers in the kids rooms? Maybe that is your problem.

Get yourself something to check what the actual humidity level is in the house. They are cheap. There is nothing to install. They just can sit on a piece of furniture.