Anyone else live in CA?
I have always felt the water company was a formidable adversary and enjoy paying them as little as possible. I think these new restriction are a great challenge. How can I reduce another 25%? We had a good family brainstorm and everyone is on board to see how badass we can be.
We started a no flush challenge this week. I average about 5 pees before I flush. My 21 year old daughter put us all to shame by setting the record at 8. The boys are all about peeing outside--such an adventure! We are trying to only do 2 loads of laundry a week and so far so good. The dishwasher is going dormant for a bit as I try to see how little water I really need to wash up. And my daughter and I are on the 3-minute bath every other day. I am French so the family likes to rib me anyway about how eager I am NOT to shower.
The boys have sports so they get a 3 minute shower every day, but I am giving prizes for under 2 minutes. My son won today after lacrosse practice--1 minute 48 seconds . . . so he didn't have to help clean up after dinner.
Anyone else joining in the fun?
We recently switched to "yellow mellow" (a week ago). Funny, our SF friends were visiting, and the 11 yo boy teased my son for not flushing. I said "pee or poop?" My son said "pee". I said "we're in a drought, that's okay."
Anyway, about a month ago we started keeping a bucket in the shower to collect water to water our trees. It doesn't "save" water because we don't actually actively water our trees. The trees are happy though. I also started taking "Navy" showers, meaning, get wet, turn off and lather up, then turn on and rinse. Haven't quite gotten my husband to do that, but he has shortened his showers a bit.
The boys only get bathed 2x a week right now, and we water the trees with their water.
I steam instead of boil foods.
I wash our veggies in the salad spinner and water the trees with the dirty water.
We try to keep to 2 loads laundry a week.
We try to use less water on dishes.
We turn off the faucet when brushing our teeth and washing our hands.
We have low flow everything.
We skip showering once a week. It would be hard to do more than that for me because I work out.
I really don't know what else to do, other than sponge baths, which really doesn't work when I get all sweaty. Maybe saving our bath water to flush the toilet?
We aren't home daytime, and our usage is 4 HCF per month, family of 4.