What are your best water saving tips?

Cold water washing of clothes, ensuring faucets are turned off fully so no dripping, being conscious of taking “shorter” showers, run the diswasher only when racks are filled. Using watercans instead of hose and nozzle to water flower beds etc. Bought water saver toilets.

Don’t leave the water running while brushing your teeth.

Use a small cup of water to rinse your mouth instead of letting the water run into the palm of your hand to rinse several times.
When showering, wet yourself. Lather while the water is off and then rinse.
Always wash with a full load of laundry.

@tranquilsea “only flushing when absolutely necessary”

Reminds of this quote from Meet the Fockers: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”

The low-flow showerheads with a “lather” feature are awesome. It’s a pain in the tokhes (I remembered, Zen!)—to turn off the water then end up rinsing with freezing cold water when you turn it back on.

We also do the “when it’s yellow let it mellow” rule.

And, to be honest, I don’t shower every day. I don’t work outside the house, so if I don’t get dirty, I don’t worry about it. I’ll go about four days, max, before my hair feels icky and just needs to be cleaned.

I just put grass seed in, the two are mutually exclusive. Especially if we don’t get any rain soon.

I wish we had a brown-water system. I’d like to use leftover water from the sinks and the shower to water the garden. We could also use cisterns to collect rain-water.

Of course, in a year like this where we’ve had twice the normal amount of rain, it’s like living in a rain forest and no one cares. If this is global warming, I think we’re going to be investing in sump-pumps, not cisterns.

Cooking pasta can take a lot of water. Don’t throw the water out when the pasta is done. Save it to rinse or soak dishes etc before washing the dishes.

Shower with a pail to catch the water and use it to flush the toilet when next needed. (Just pour it in the toilet bowl, It’s usually enough water to make it flush.)

Shower with your significant other.

@rojo we tried that, it took longer and we both needed another shower when we got done.

Brick(s) in the toilet tank to displace water and reduce the amount for each flush.

Turn off the water while brushing teeth and/or washing your hands. Turn the shower off (get a volume controller) while you are actually lathering body and shampooing hair—- this one saves a lot. Be sure you have low flush toilets or put bricks in regular toilets to use less water per flush. Don’t rinse dishes before putting in the DW. It you are afraid they will smell before you run the DW (when completely full only) run the Rinse-Only cycle—it uses less water than rinsing off dishes one by one. Some people use the water after taking a bath in it for watering plants; I do not do that.

We just went through 10 years of drought. We couldn’t water our garden, wash the car or use a hose even. So, we had to take some extreme measures to save water.

All the above. Water saving shower heads, hose heads etc. Aerators on your taps.

Depending on how much you need to save water…If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down (sorry! It saves water though).

You can also put a brick in the cistern so it doesn’t use so much water.

Keep a bucket in the shower to collect the water you waste while waiting for the shower to heat up, use the water to water your plants.

Shower don’t bath and time your showers. You can shower in 4 minutes.

Use a bowl in the kitchen sink to collect clean water when filling pans etc.

Put water crystals in the ground when you plant new plants. They fill up with water and help your plants survive. You can also get stakes so the water is sort of trickle fed to them.

Only plant drought resistant plants. Succulents and cacti are good.

Treat your plants with tough love. Water for the first two or three weeks when they go in, and then wean them off expecting you to water them.

Don’t water your lawn. Lawns will come back.

Mulch your gardens. It helps stop evaporation.

Send your children to your parents house for the next ten months.

You water bill will be cut in half.

Been there, done that.

@john65pennington But did you buy the T-shirt?

Instead of water, just use Mountain Dew.

Whenever I go to the store to buy produce, that needs to be washed, I try to do a bunch of the washing all at once. But you can waste a lot of water down the drain when you’re cleaning veggies, so I always get a big stock pot and set it under the faucet and I put a strainer over the stock pot, so when I’m rinsing my veggies, I’m also collecting the water, which I then use to water my outdoor potted plants (instead of using more water from the hose).

Same thing with boiling potatoes, or pasta. When I drain the hot water, instead of just dumping it down the sink, I drain it into the big stock pot, let it cool and then pour it on the plants.

If I’m rinsing out a pot or other item that is either too big or not able to go into the dishwasher (such as my non stick frying pans). I’ll put a tiny bit of boiling water (that I’ve heated in the kettle or in the microwave) with a little bit of soap and swish it around immediately after I’ve used the pan, rather than waiting for the stuff to harden onto the sides. Then I scrub it right away, and then use only little bitty spurts of water to rinse off the soap, rather than just turning the faucet on full blast and going crazy. You only need a tiny bit of rinse water, if you rinse, swish, pour, rinse, swish, pour, rinse, swish, pour. Most people tend to fill up their huge pots when they’re washing and rinsing them in the sink. Not necessary.

I also always keep a bucket in the tub/shower to collect the water while I’m waiting for it to heat up. Or I’ll use a big bowl in the sink for the same reason. Then I use that water to pour on my plants or give my “mellow” toilet a flush. We have low flow toilets and don’t flush until it’s necessary. I live in So Cal, so we’ve been mandated to do a lot of these things for years now, so it’s become second nature.

We have those kind of nozzles on all of our hoses that allow you to spray only when you need to, rather than having the hose running the whole time, when you’re watering your plants. Also, we never use the hose to clean off the drive way or the patio. We use brooms.

We have all of our water sprinklers on timers.

If you need to clean out a recyclable container (like peanut butter or margarine) instead of standing there with the faucet running and hoping that the gunk will dissipate, instead get a little bit of boiling water and a spoonful of baking soda and put the lid back on the container and just shake, shake, shake. The baking soda sucks up most of the gunk, so you don’t need to use very much water. This also works for bottles of vegetable oil or bottles of salad dressing that need to be rinsed.

And get yourself one of those rubber scrapers to scrape the leftover junk from your plates (into the trashcan) instead of standing at the sink letting your faucet run while you spray and spray.

We’ve also replaced some of our plants with more drought tolerant plants.

If you suspect that your toilets are leaking, by hearing them running or draining numerous times, even though you’ve not been flushing, have a plumber come out and fix the leaks. You can lose 100’s of gallons of water with a leaky toilet.

Take your car to the carwash, either the drive through kind or the do it yourself type. Just don’t wash your car in your drive way.

I built the house 30 years ago with water saving shower heads, extra insulation, thick walls, insulated basement, high efficiency water heat and boiler, then super insulated the boiler.
I just put in a new 95% efficient heating system, have all energy star appliances and am working on improving the standby efficiency of the computer system.

I have also showering with your significant other uses more water so we have sex at the lake and only cause minor pollution.

IMy father taught us energy efficiency; he was raised during the depression and really knew about setting back the thermostat, storm windows and doors, and attic insulation. I was way ahead of the curve for energy efficiency.

Pee while you’re showering to save a flush.