How to Conserve Water

Member

By Vikki Albers
User-Submitted Article

Article Rating:

(39 Ratings)

A willingness to conserve water began for us with leftover pooch water. Rather than pouring the gray water left in her bowl down the drain every morning, we started using it to Greenly water potted plants outside. A conservative two pints of gray water every day kept the geraniums quite happy. To conserve water at your house consider these suggestions.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

An interest in conserving water
A bucket

Step 1

Take a look at the amount of water going down the drain. Buckets full disappear every day! The cold water lost before the water heats enough to wash dishes. The water after steaming veggies and boiling eggs. Pasta water. Water from rinsing the coffee pot. Lots of water used washing hands. Literally gallons of water every day go right down the drain – gray water that might be used to grow plants.
Step 2

An effort to conserve and reuse more gray water can expand to placing a plastic bucket under the faucet in your kitchen sink. Collect water not contaminated that would ordinarily go down the drain.
Step 3

Contaminated water contains anything ants might savor. Gray water is best without sugar and fat. Pour the last sip of cold coffee or tea into the mixture but only if it lacks sugar, honey or half-and-half. No crumbs of food either, please.
Step 4

Ants aren’t attracted by (and the plants don’t mind) hand and dish soap rinsed into the gray water; nor are either bothered by the pasta starch-residue left in water after boiling. These all break-down back into the Earth so can be added to the bucket.
Step 5

A great deal of gray water can be collected and reused - you will be amazed. Other Green uses for this gray water are to pour it into a sauce pan that might need soaking or use it to rinse plastic containers before tossing into the recycle container. (This used gray water does go down the drain.)
Step 6

Will this gray-water collecting shrink your water bill? It hasn’t reduced ours – but it does conserve water. If you were to start using gray water, and a friend or neighbor were, and a friend or neighbor of theirs tries it... that might just have an impact. We might be able to affect the water conservation efforts of our local communities, in a very easy way.
Step 7

Is conserving water good Feng Shui? Yes. Every time we take a step toward increasing our connection with Green it boosts the energy of our homes.
Step 8

To carry this Feng Shui thought a step further, if your front door is in the Career Life Area (center third of the front of your home), use that doorway to take the bucket of gray water out of your house to the plants. The Career Life Area element is water and the Mouth of Chi is your front door. Taking water out through that door acknowledges the flow of opportunity. All variety of opportunities flowing in and out – accept and welcome good fortune and demonstrate a willingness to give back.
Step 9

This would be an auspicious time to express gratitude. We are blessed to have water enough to drink, even enough to share with our plants.

In gratitude and with an intention to serve.