Water Water Everywhere

I may have gone a little bit eco crazy lately, but it's for good reason.  Trust me.

With spring time just around the corner and our baby plants getting bigger every day, it's time to start working on making last year's plans even better.  We've decided to change some plant locations in our garden, moved some more plants to the front of the house and mended our soil.  But we also looked at how much money our garden cost us last year too.  In a nutshell, it was a lot.

Sure most of it was soil, since we had exactly zero to start with, but a lot of it was also water.  Marco did rig up a self watering system with a couple of drip hoses and a timer so that we never over watered and we never forgot to water (both of which would mean disaster and wasted money).  But the drip was for only our garden.  All the potted plants still had to be watered, and the house plants, the seeds, the garden in the front... it ended up being a lot of water and our bill was plain evidence.

So there are two ways we are planning on turning that around this year.  The first one is to convert our only moderately useful barrel into a real live rain barrel.

 We're going to use the water that is in there (it spills from the roof) and actually tap it so we can use the water consistently.  Not once have we actually used the water that sits in this barrel and it isn't fitted to deter mosquitoes, so that will also be fixed.

Plus, we are going to up the ante on an idea we started last year, but didn't really hold ourselves to.  We're going to stop wasting water from the tap.

Every time we turn on the water, it we aren't using it "as is", say we need warm water or something, then it goes into one of those wine bottles (or one of the other 6 dozen out of the frame).  Let's say I need to thaw something for dinner and I fill a pot with warm water.  Well, the water from the tap that is still cold goes into those bottles and then after the warm water has thawed the meat/cheese/whatever that goes into one of the bottles too.  These full bottles are then used to water the indoor plants, the worms, my personal water bottle, the dogs or poured into the rain barrel outside the back door.

We also put a bucket in the bathroom for the same deal when we take showers.  That water goes to water some of the bigger house plants, the dogs, or into the rain barrel too.

So far we are filling at least 2-3 liters of "wasted" water every day just from the kitchen sink and none of it sits around for very long.

Waste not want not huh?