RADICALLY reduce water usage!

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I live in a small apartment, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of the worst droughts in history is going into its, I think, fifth or sixth year. Yet, I have an extensive garden, in my yard and in the empty lot next door.

Yet, I use very VERY little water: about one fourth normal usage.

How?

Simple.

Get a tub. Put it in your shower. Get a shower massager on a hose, particularly one that shuts off when not in use, without turning off hot and cold.

Run the hot into the tub until it warms; don't let it go down the drain.

Stand in tub. Shower with reduced flow. The massager has higher pressure with less water, and you won't feel the difference. Shut water off from massager, when not in use during shower. You'll have to turn off the shower with faucet handles when done, or hose could burst! When finished, dangle massager over tub to drain.

My tub holds 16 gallons. One shower half fills it. That's about eight gallons. A normal shower is twenty five gallons.

I shower every OTHER day, rather than every day. On "off" days, I take "bird baths" in the sink. I walk a lot, as I have no car. I do a lot of heavy, physical labor, such as gardening. Yet, except if I get really nasty, I don't need a daily shower.

Now, sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of bleach into the tub water.

The average, low-flow toilet flush takes about four gallons. A regular toilet flushes about ten. Use your shower water. I find I can flush urine with toilet paper with half a gallon. And the bleach keeps both the tub and the toilet clean.

Your shower water can be used to mop floors, too. And it's good for soaking bath mats, towels....I have a hamster cage soaking in my tub right now.

So, right there, just for the shower, I've reduced my usage from fifty gallons in 2 days to 8! And flush my toilet for free.

Put water with a drop of bleach in the sink to rinse dishes, rather than letting water run down the drain.

To warm sink water, place a bowl or pitcher under the stream, to collect warming water, rather than letting it flow down the sink. I use it to water plants, fill pet dishes, and fill my drinking water filter decanter in the refrigerator.

Also, in the kitchen, one can buy a connector for the discharge plumbing, screw it to a garden hose, and flush kitchen sink water out into the garden.

My washer is outside. I have attached old vacuum cleaner hoses to the discharge hose and extended them uphill, to the end of a flower bed. When the washer discharges, it flushes the water into my garden.

I use half the recommended soap in my wash, and enhance my laundry with such things as vinegar or washing soda. I use as close to environmentally-friendly soap as I can get. Since both wash- and rinse-cycle water gets discharged and flows over a large area, the soaps get diluted. I also have to suppliment the watering of that bed with a LITTLE fresh hose water.

And the soaps discourage insects.

Each fill of the washer is a minimum of twenty gallons. So, I'm saving a minimum of forty gallons, per load of laundry.

Finally, there are NO dripping faucets in my house. There are drip-catchers under every water source, to make sure I'm not wasting water.

I live in a utilities-paid complex. But I don't want to hear the landlord whine about the water bill. In addition, I can't, in good conscience, be irresponsible with any utilities, considering the environmental impacts.

So, that's how to radically reduce your water usage.