Water consumption update

After a couple of exceptionally busy weeks, I think I'm back--for real.  It has just been crazy around my house and I've been running around like a crazy woman during naptime.  This is really my only time to blog, so if I fill up my time with cleaning, laundry or patting little one's backs so they drift off to sleep, then that leaves little blogging time. 

Last week I posted about a decrease in our income and how I was going to work to reduce water consumption.  I did do a few things and have implemented others.  First off, I filled a couple of 2 liter bottles and placed them in the toilet tanks.  The bottle displaced quite a bit of water and will now use less with each flush.  Along with that we are employing the "let it mellow" technique and simply do not flush unless it's necessary.  Please note (in case my daycare licensing rep. is reading) that I'm not doing this in the daycare area, only our family living quarters.  Although, I will say that it does happen occasionally anyway if I'm not standing over each child making sure that they remember to flush.  Such is life I guess.

Other areas where I'm trying to make sure to get the most bang for my water buck...

• Use the water that I fill the cooler with when making yogurt to water the pepper plants on the deck.
• Make sure the dishwasher and washing machine are full to capacity when running a load.
• When hand washing pots and pans, I start with soapy water in the smallest pot and after washing, dump the soapy water into the next size pot and rinse the first pot over the second so I collect that water.  Continue as needed.
• Take short showers (challenging with the girls-they love to take long, hot showers)
• When brushing teeth, fill a small drinking cup about half full of water.  Dip toothbrush before brushing, and pour a bit on the toothbrush if needed.  Use the remaining water to rinse mouth and get a drink if needed.  The hope is that the kids can self regulate the amount of water they need to do their teeth.  If found that unless I was standing over them, they still let quite a bit of water run down the drain just trying to turn the knob off.

There are still a couple of other things that I need to explore further (or get Hubby on board)...

• use grey water from washing machine and shower to flush the toilet or water garden (hoping to plant some fall veggies).
• get a rain barrel going for things like washing the car or watering the lawn-although I think the season for that is over for the year.  If we could get it up and going by next summer, that would save us quite a bit of water I think.

That's about it for right now.  I'd love to hear from you if you do other things to save water.  I'm sort of new at this, so I'm sure there are tons of things that I could be doing that I'm not.