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Conserving Water…everyday is a new day to use less water

I found this great article published by the University of Kentucky that gives some excellent suggestions for limiting water usage. The mayor wants to limit water use to 25 gallons per person per day (which didn’t pass, of course and ironically enough, HE can’t even muster!), but realistically, 40 gallons per day is completely doable without much change to your lifestyle. Here is a run down (with my own commentary, of course):

~For laundry - To limit water use when doing laundry, wash only full loads and avoid using the permanent press cycle. A family of four should try to limit laundry to 4 full loads per week. This is exactly the reason I’ve officially stopped cloth diapering. If one fill is 20 gallons, and I soak, wash, rinse, rinse (and sometimes rinse again), that’s a total of 4 or 5 fills - 100 gallons at each pop! Granted, I don’t do full loads - usually medium or medium-large with diapers - but it’s still close to 200 gallons/week to wash diapers. So Seventh Generation, we’re going to make your richer over the next year. If you want to conserve, using Elimination Communication is a great way to introduce potty use at an early age. While it might not help in the short term, it can certainly make a huge difference in the long term.

~ Adults take one 5-minute shower per day. With a shower head that flows at
a rate of 2.5 gallons per minute, water use would be 12.5 gallons per shower. All
shower heads manufactured after 1995 must flow at no more than 2.5 gallons per minute. If you have an older shower, now might be a good time to change. Um…DUH! And low-flow shower heads aren’t very expensive.

~For baths - Children take 4 tub baths and 3 sponge baths per week. Water use for tub baths is limited to 12 gallons per bath. For sponge baths, limit water use to 1 gallon per bath. This is a hard one for us - the kids get baths almost every night. In the summer, they do get baths every night. But my compromise? They still bathe together OR shower with us, so we’re ultimately saving water.

~For hand washing - Each member of the family limits hand washing with water to 3 times per day. A supply of hand sanitizer or anti-bacterial wipes should be kept on hand for other times hands need to be cleaned. When washing hands, wet them, turn the faucet off, lather hands, and turn the faucet back on to rinse. This is another hard one for me. The kids get good hand-washings before eating and after playing outside, so I’d say maybe 4-5 times per day. But I HATE hand sanitizer! I always feel like I need to wash it off after putting it on. And I absolutely can’t STAND using it with the kids! Yuck! I will in a pinch, though. As far as every day, multiple time per day use - NO WAY! I wash my hands like probably 20 times per day, though. I just always NEED to - changing diapers, helping with the potty, cooking, collecting eggs & caring for chickens, prepping food for the kids, washing *their* hands, etc. I have found that the foaming soap bottles are excellent! I squirt on the kids’ hands without water, then only turn the water on to rinse.

~For brushing teeth - Each family member brushes their teeth 2 times per day but limits water use to 1 pint per brushing. This can be achieved by wetting your brush and filling a cup with water for rinsing.

~For shaving - Limit water use when shaving to ½ gallon each time. Do this by partially filling the basin with water, and dipping your razor to rinse. Or just get an electric razor - that’s what Chris uses.

~For toilet flushing - Most toilets found in homes today will use 3.5 - 5 gallons of water per flush. Toilets manufactured after 1978 use 3.5 gallons, while those manufactured since 1995 use only 1.6 gallons per flush. If your toilet uses 5 gallons per flush, you can cut that amount to 4 gallons by filling a 1-gallon plastic jug or bag and placing it in the toilet tank. To further reduce the amount of water flushed away, limit family members to 4 flushes per day. This will likely mean not flushing the toilet every time it is used. If a family of four limits water use to 4 gallons per flush and limits flushes to 4 per person per day, they can dramatically reduce water use. This is quite interesting! Our toilets use 1.6 gallons to flush. And we have started doing, “If it’s yellow…” around here. I would say that I flush each toilet about 4 times per day on average (we have 3 toilets), so we aren’t doing so bad here. But there are these new toilets called Double Flush Toilets - they are awesome!! They have one small flush for #1 and a “real” flush for #2. And recently a few companies have been coming out with conversion kits, such as Caroma and TwoFlush. Chris was looking into getting us a conversion kit, but I told him it wasn’t worth it. I’m sure when you flush down a half of a roll of TP, you have to use the #2 setting, so we might as well just keep what we’ve got - we won’t save that much water. And I’d flush MORE than I do now, so it would be moot. It would only save 0.8 gal per flush.

~For dishwashing - On average, an automatic dishwasher uses 15 gallons of water per load. Hand-washing dishes can use as much as 20 gallons of water for the same amount of dishes. To limit water use, use the dishwasher only when it is full. If your dishwasher has a water saver cycle, use it. When hand-washing dishes, do not rinse them under a running tap. Use small pan or basin of hot water instead. Limit water use further by using paper plates and plastic cups and utensils for some meals. Try to keep water use for dishwashing to an average of 15 gallons per day. This is my tragic downfall in saving water. We have a dishwasher and use it often - about every to every other day. BUT our water in our kitchen takes FOREVER to get hot, so I waste A LOT of water waiting for it to heat up. And I run the water a lot when I’m washing to power off food and catsup. We really need a hot-water recirculating pump, like a Grundfos; they are available on Ebay, but they are a little out of our current price range. But we really need to make this a priority. Hey - wait a minute! In seeking out that link, I discovered that the prices have gone down on the re-circulation pumps. Hooray!

~Food preparation / drinking - Water is used in many different ways when preparing foods and beverages. To conserve water, wash and peel vegetables in a small pan of water instead of under a running tap. When cooking with water, choose appropriate sized pans with tight fitting lids to avoid water loss to evaporation. Keep a pitcher or jug of water in the refrigerator for drinking. If concern for water use is high, choose alternatives to concentrated juices and powdered drink mixes. Strive to limit water use for cooking and drinking to less than 5 gallons per day, but do not limit fluid intake for family members.

That’s that! I sure hope you learned something and discovered at least one way you can conserve water in your home. Tell me about it - leave me a comment