Water Waste

Recently, Nick and I changed the way we begin and end our day.  One thing we do now is fill a cup with a little water and use that to wet and rinse our toothbrush.  Then that water get used to clean the spit out of the sink.  It beats letting 3 or 4 cups of water go down the drain while you wet your brush and while rinising out your spit and the toothbrush.  

Also at Nick's parents we have alot of water pressure so we switched to a "lower" flow showerhead (uses about 2.5 gals. rather than the 4-5 gals. the old one used).  My favorite thing though is just cutting back on shower times.  I used to shampoo, soap, rinse, condition, maybe shave and then rinse again.  Now I changed to Dr. Bronner's castille soap and use about half-dollar size handful to shampoo, soap up and shave (when needed).  I cut my showering time from about 10mins to about 5 mins.  One thing I need to do better is shaving out side the shower--that would save a little more time and water.  Actually I should just get a rechargable shaver and then I wouldn't need to use any water.  I'll look around for a few good ones and give some reviews later.

Lastly, just not flushing when you pee is a good idea.  I try to do this (it is a hard habit to break though).  Also you can dampen your hands, turn off the water, soap them for 10 seconds and then turn the water back on to rinse.  You don't need to have the water on full blast either.  Just a enough to get a good quick rinse.

I am sure there are lots of other things you can do, but when you want to make changes to help the environment sometimes small steps are better to start with.  If you start to big you will either get overwhelmed or just think it costs to much to do so many changes at once.  Anyways if you have any more helpful ideas, let me know.