Conservation & Going Green

We got our water bill yesterday for the last three months. It was horrendous. I asked my husband how did we manage to spend $139.00 on water. It boiled down to the fact that we had another family living with us which meant 4 extra bodies to be showered, extra clothes & dishes to wash, and of course extra toilet flushes. Even so that is an awful lot of money to spend on water!

After the shock of how much we spent on water alone passed I was trying to decide how we would cut down on wasting the water. This wasn't something I had given much thought to. I never realized how expensive, and precious, the water actually is. So last night instead of running the water the entire time I wash and rinse each dish I decided to try a different way. I lightly rinsed off the extra food on all the plates and filled the sink half way with warm soapy water. I used so much less water than I usually do, and it was quicker too. This method also saved soap! After the sink was filled I put each dish in the soapy water, scrubbed it and then placed it back on the counter until they were all washed. Then I let out the water and used the cold water just to rinse the dish off and turned the water off in between. Who knew I had been wasting this much water every time I did the dishes. I actually felt guilty about how carefree I had been with this aspect of our home. Everywhere else I have tried to cut back, turn off the lights, don't use the dryer, keep the thermostat at a reasonable level and don't turn it on unless it's above 85 outside. How in the world did I overlook the water.

After dishes were done and our daughter was in bed my husband went out to do our grocery shopping for the week. It's actually very simple since we switched to organic and unprocessed, and much cheaper too. When he came home he had bought a low flow shower head for our bathroom since I love my two showers a day this could be a big savings. I was skeptical about how the new showerhead would work since I loved the one we had before on a hose. I also thought "low flow" meant that it wasn't going to be powerful. However when I got into the shower this morning it was fantastic. Just out of curiosity on how much water I was using with this new low flow thing I decided to plug the drain for the duration of my shower. My tub only filled up 2 inches! That's a lot of water savings.

Today's little how to:

Dusting spray

Ingredients:

Olive oil
Lemon juice
Water
Distilled white vinegar
1 16 oz spray bottle

Directions:

Pour in 2 tsp live oil into container, add 20-30 drops of lemon juice and 1/4 cup vinegar fill the rest with h2o and dust away. Shake well. This worked wayyyyy better than store bought.