I'd love to, but I have to stay in and wash my hair

…now I understand that old strange saying, which I always assumed was just an excuse not to do something you don’t want to do.

A good friend would like me to come and help him assess doing renovations in new house tonight, and I’ve just informed him that I can’t make it for another three hours – I have to do the dishes and wash my hair. Yes, I’m still ambitious at this point. I think give it another two weeks, and the hair-washing may be replaced by the increasing use of bandanas….

It’s Day Two of my 25-litre-per-day water conservation challenge and I’m quickly learning that everyday tasks take a lot more time than they did before. Almost 45 minutes for the dishes last night (guess that serves me right for burning lentils to the bottom of the pot). All this while watching my roommates load the dishwasher. Still somehow, I made it through the day using only 13 litres! So I have 12 banked for a not-so-rainy day.

Auto-pilot-turning-on-the-tap-incidents, Day One: Four
Auto-pilot-turning-on-the-tap-incidents, Day Two: One

I’m improving!

I’ve been keeping track of my water use by filling a 20 Litre tank at home every morning, and a 5 Litre jug at work, and drawing all my water from these two containers. This works well when I stick to it, but when I need to flush a toilet at work, or take into account the amount of water that went into my morning coffee, and then subtract that from my allotment in my head…..things get very confusing!

I’ve had a number of pledges already, and I encourage you to participate. The average Canadian uses 329 litres of water per day. That’s the equivalent of 82.25 big four-litre milk jugs! In comparison I’m using only 6.25 milk jugs per day! So I’m asking that for the next month, you pledge to cut at least 6 milk jugs off your 82, not too much to ask is it? That’s just a few toilet flushes, or a couple of minutes off your shower. Use the dishwater to flush your toilet. Cut out a load of laundry a week to save between 40 and 160 litres (depending on your washing machine of course…)

Pledge forms available here:
http://waterconservationchallenge.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/pledge-form/

Fill out and send it back to me at water@environmentalsociety.ca

Bring on day three.

Alina.