A set back

I had a set back with my bread baking endeavour when I threw out my starter (!?).  I feel really mad at myself for doing this.  My primary reason was because I wanted to make a natural one from the yeast found in my kitchen both because I think I'm clever enough to do this and because I've heard that type of starter will last longer.  I also wanted to have it in a smaller container in the fridge.  Unfortunately, it is really cold right now and we're trying to save on electricity by not leaving the heaters on constantly.  Consequently our kitchen is not the ideal spot for a starter to ferment.  After a couple of days of sitting with only some tiny bubbles to show for it, I tried giving it a little boost by sitting it in a warm oven.  Silly me - I didn't preheat the oven thinking I'd just blast the heat for a minute and turn it off.  I got distracted and left the heat on which basically started cooking my starter attempt AND the plastic container started to soften so I had to throw it all out.  

The thing is, the starter I had was working really well and it seemed to be lasting well too.  I should have kept using it until I had a consistent secondary starter all ready to go. In the meantime, I have nothing to use for the loaves of bread I want to bake right now so I'm just going to have to go with a slow rise normal bread.  Very annoying.