Never expect things to go as planned
Accepting failures and uncontrollable situations
I have to be honest: it has been hard to achieve my 60L water a day goal every single day. A lot of things got out of hand and frustration might be the best word to describe it overall.
Day 5: let's do this!
All the support that came from people reading the first part of my diary made me feel confident and strong to continue with the challenge. I cooked with 200mL of water but doing the dishes was still a pain.
I found that some people use paper plates so they don't have to wash anything but, for me, that brings another issue: waste. Also, what about the water used in producing those plates? The water we consume goes way beyond the water we can see. (I will write more about it in the next story I write in this diary so stay tuned!)
Day 6: Watching my efforts going down the drain — literally.
At home, I got used to flushing with the water from the bucket. But what about when I am not home? When I flush once outside my house it's painful but I can handle it. But flushing three times was heartbreaking. Seeing all that water going to waste and having no alternatives was frustrating.
Day 7: "Darling, there’s no way! No, no, no, no way I’m living without you…"*
Since day 3 I've been collecting the clean water while I waited for the shower to heat up to wash clothes by hand (or at least try). But two bumps in the road appeared on day 5 when I tried to do it:
- There wasn't enough clean water for me to wash my bed linen.
- There weren't enough buckets to wash everything.
I live at an accommodation that has some shared spaces like the laundry. There we have some washing machines and a sink. I thought of washing my clothes by hand in those sinks but I would have to clean them first in order to feel that it was ready and safe to use. The only wat I could think of cleaning it was letting it soak in water with liquid bleach. Not a great idea but the only one that would make me comfortable enough to use that space. And then another bump in the road came: I didn’t have time to wash everything by hand. And, most important, I was too tired for it.
Result: 2 washing machines cycles and a huge frustration of having saved all that water during the week in the best way I could and ending up like this. As we say in Brazil: "Swim, swim and die on the beach".
* I guess Jennifer Hudson must be speaking of a washing machine but I also found an alternative that could have been pretty helpful though: https://www.thescrubba.com/
Day 8: raindrops keep falling…
It was a lovely rainy day and then… the lovely part got ruined when I started thinking of how much water I could be collecting to wash my clothes, flush my toilet and water my plants (that I don't have).
I know I'll never stop the rain by complaining but how could I fix this living in a small apartment with no outdoor area to place some buckets? Please, write on the comments if you have any ideas!
This is the second part of my diary trying to live with only 60L of water a day. If you haven’t read the first part yet, go check it out!
