Here are my tips for ways to save / reuse / recycle water.
- When we give the younger children baths, we start with the dirtiest and then use the same water for every subsequent child.
- If I'm not too tired after giving the children baths, we use that same water to then bathe our cats (you could bathe your dogs, etc.).
- I do not pour out fresh water. We use even small leftover cups of water. You can pour this in the cat water bowl. We put it in our chickens' water containers. Or, now that I keep water on the wood stove for humidity, I can even put leftover water in that pot and I don't have to run water out of our faucet.
- Keep the faucet turned OFF when brushing teeth. Only turn it on when rinsing.
- Collect rain water and use it for whatever you need.
- For particularly soiled clothes that need to be soaked, rather than soaking them in a tub of water or in the washer, put them in your bathtub and let the water run over them while you shower. If the clothes are that soiled, they're probably work or play clothes anyway so it's not like you're going to hurt them even if you stand on them while you shower.
- Rather than wasting the water from my pasta or other things that only use water to cook (like steaming veggies), I pour this into a container and reuse it to water plants and, depending on what the water was, I might also cook with it. I use water off steamed veggies, for example, in soups. It's VERY healthy water with lots of vitamins and minerals.
- If you're cleaning and the water gets so dirty that you need fresh cleaning water, sometimes you can pour the top water into another bucket and then dispose of the water at the bottom of the container. Then, just use the water you saved as your "fresh" water. Most of the sediment goes to the bottom so even though the water might be cloudy, it's unlikely to have as much muck in it.
- This might sound disgusting to some, but we are SERIOUS about saving water. At bedtime, when we know everyone is going to the bathroom anyway, rather than have everyone go and flush it seven times, we let everyone go to the bathroom and THEN flush it one time. (Well, with the exception of Sarah, who IS a 14 year old girl. She would rather die than do this so she is exempted. The three boys - of course - and Hannah, who is only 7, don't care. And I could care less. If you're all taking turns and USING the same toilet anyway, why not flush it all at once.)
- When our washer and dryer broke this spring, we bought an energy efficient set. It's supposed to save us water, but honestly I didn't see even a smidgen of a drop in our bill. That was very disappointing. I'm not sure what's up with that. I'm even washing less laundry now because I'm not having to wash each load twice to get it clean. You think that would really be saving us money, but there has been no difference from this change.
- Our dishwasher broke about six weeks ago and we have been washing all dishes by hand since then. My water bill for the past month came the other day and it was $23 LESS than every other month!! Our normal bill has been $75 / month for water ever since we moved into this house. This past month it was $52. That's an amazing difference and the only change was that we did not use the dishwasher at all. Amazing.
- Put a solid object (brick, bottle of water, etc.) in the back of your toilet so that it reduces the amount of water used in each flush. I have heard this one a lot, but I wonder how safe it is for your toilet. I may try it and see.
- Collect the "warm-up" water. This is a GREAT idea! I'm definitely going to try this. When people shower, they typically don't jump right into the cold water; they wait for it to warm up. I know we do this in our house, especially in the upstairs shower because it literally takes about ten minutes before the water is warm enough to even step into. That shower is about as far away as you can get from our water heater and there are lots of pipes in between. Anyway, the idea is that you put a plastic tub (or something) in the shower while you're waiting for the water to get warm and since that's clean water right out of the faucet, you can use it for anything you want!
Here is another idea for how to use the warm-up water. We recently installed a wood stove (so we could afford to have heat!) and we just LOVE IT!!! We are so very grateful to have it, but I would recommend that everyone save money and try to install a wood stove. It is such a great resource. We have actually been collecting the warm-up water in a large stew pot, then I let it heat up on the wood stove, then I pour that in the sink and that's the water I use for dishes! (We took out our dishwasher about a month ago). This way, I'm not paying extra for the water OR to heat the water to wash dishes. I also save some of the water on the rinse side and rinse the dishes in nice, clean, HOT water. :)
I am so excited about this!
I'm trying to find more uses for leftover cooking water other than the two I mentioned - watering plants and cooking. I would like to be able to cook with MORE of it. And I've wondered if I could use it to water my pets, especially our chickens because they use a lot of water. I'm not sure if it would be healthy for them, though, since some of the cooking water contains natural sodium and other minerals that might harm the chickens.
And of course, if there are any other tips in other areas on saving water, I'd love to hear those as well. I'm sure some of you have some great ideas and I'd like to try them!
Meanwhile, I hope some of you have enjoyed my tips and try some of them. I bet you'll save water and reduce your water bill. :)
Sonya
No comments:
Post a Comment