Speaking of weather… lately I’ve been thinking a lot about our drought situation and how, up to now, that El Niño we’d been welcoming with open arms (and dry flora), has been, for the most part, a no-show. (That’s expected to change next week, however, as meteorologists are predicting rain across the state.)
Nevertheless, I’ve been doing my part to save H2O any way I can. To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to invite you all into my shower, so I can explain, step-by-step, what I do to conserve that most valuable resource but still feel “clean as a whistle.” (I wonder just how clean most whistles are.)
Unfortunately, right when I turn my shower on, the water runs ice-cold for a little while. Since I’m not in need of shock therapy (allegedly), I’ve opted to avoid that torture (and the risk of giving my neighbors the wrong idea with my screams) and instead get creative with my eco-conscious techniques.
So, as soon as I start the shower, I go to my kitchen and fill up my water-filtering pitcher as I’m waiting for the hot water to make its way from the water heater to my shower head. Instead of letting all that water go to waste as it’s warming, I also fill other containers with it to give to my plants later on. I’m proud to announce that all this is achieved while in my birthday suit, so that I can quickly make my way into the shower as soon as the water is tolerable enough to endure.
Using Long Beach Water’s suggestion of taking a one-song shower, in my bathroom I have my Bluetooth speaker, connected to my phone to play a song from Spotify. I’ve gotten pretty good at timing my showers to be just a few minutes— the length of a typical track. (The song “Hall & Oates” by Satchmode is a personal favorite. At 3 minutes and 25 seconds, it’s ideal for getting in and getting out.)
Taking that concept a step further though, I also don’t run the water the whole time I’m in there. I do an initial full-body rinse, then I turn the water off. Then I shampoo my imaginary hair and my beard. Then I do a quick rinse of those areas, turn the water off again, and move on to my face. I take this lather-scrub-rinse approach to my upper body, then my “bingo ticket” (that’s the charming yet perplexing euphemism my parents used to refer to our nether regions), then legs/feet, until all is sparkling and fresh.
(I’d taken numerous selfies during my last shower to fully illustrate this approach, but, unfortunately, we ran out of space on this page for those captivating photos. Sorry— you’ll just have to use your imagination, folks.)
If you’d like to find more suggestions on saving water (without the mental image of a wet, naked 47-year-old dude), visit missionh2olb.com/tips .
