NOBODY SAID IT WAS EASY!
Today is Thursday 10 October, I’m on the fourth day of my “save water challenge” and I have to be honest, I’ve never thought it would be so hard. Indeed I’m realizing that apart from the difficulty to change the routine, there are activities such as “take a shower” or “flush the toilet” that if you don’t have installed a modern bathroom system, it will be really hard to have control and therefore drastically reduce consumption.
As I explained in my previous article my challenge started on Monday, October 7. Once I became aware of my habitual consumption, I tried to realistically set a plan to reduce my consume, so after online research, looking for inspiration, I started writing in my sketchbook all the main points of my new routine which includes:
1)The use of a 2L bottle to control the use of water while I wash dishes
2)The use of a 0.5L bottle to control all the little cleaning activities: hands, teeth, and face.
3)The integration of two plastic bottles 0,5L with water in my toilet tank to reduce the amount of water used per flush
4) Shampoo and shower gel together and open water only when necessary, thus reducing the time and consumption of the shower.
Thanks to all these precautions to my routine, on Monday I was able to reduce my daily water consumption, but not enough to be satisfied.
I reported the following consumptions:
Wash dishes: 5 L (two times a day)
Shower: 30 L (once a day)
Cleaning Hands: 400ml (three times a day)
Face: 200ml (once a day)
Teeth: 200ml (three times a day)
Flushing Toilet: 8L (three times a day)Daily Goal: 50 L
Daily Consumption: 66L
Anyway, I think it was a good result for the first day so I ended the day convinced that I could get more, even if only through performing the strategy. In fact, for example, washing the dishes using a bottle to rinse was not easy at all, because the water doesn’t have the same jet of the sink obviously,
Tuesday, October 8, was the turn of my girlfriend and home-mates for wash dishes but I am a really competitive person, and I wanted to try again to wash the dishes with my “2L bottle technique” in order to do better. Even if it wasn’t functional again, I managed to use only 4 L, exactly one-third of my daily consumption before the challenge.
I felt proud of myself even if I remain convinced that with a more efficient water jet system I would be more effective.
For the rest, I kept more or less the same habits of the previous day, so, at the end of the day, I consumed a total of 63L of water.
At this point one thing was clear, considering that, despite my dedication, only with toilet and shower consumption I overtake my daily goal, I have to find ways to reduce considerably their consumption even further, avoiding having to buy or change anything.
On Wednesday, October 9, unfortunately, I was very sick and I was not able to be too vigilant with my plan. If you don’t feel well it’s not recommended, and it’s not easy too, to start taking a shower if the water is not at the right temperature…
I don’t know my consumption, but surely it was higher than the previous days.
Even today, I don’t feel very well, but step by step I’m getting better.
I spent my morning looking for other interesting solution, in order to find more effective strategies to achieve my goal, and I found a funny way to consume even less water in daily cleaning activities, which is based on the use of a spray, like those used for plants, but to wash hands, I’ll try also face and teeth.
Inspired by this solution, I may have also found a new way to further reduce the use of water while I wash the dishes.
Now before publishing, I read the diary of a classmate who is making my same challenge, to optimize the use of the shower, she collects the water and uses it again to manually flush the toilet.
So far I have focused a lot on consuming less, but optimization can also be the way. I’ll probably try this solution too from tomorrow.
We’ll see how it goes in the next few days, I’m confident.
Road to 50L a day continues…
