6 Easy Ways to Save Water at Home

Water covers 70% of the Earth, but only 1% is easily accessible to you and me. The rest is either salt water, or locked in ice caps and glaciers.

Here in Australia, water awareness is something that you're taught from a very young age. Even when your part of the country isn't experiencing a drought, there are still plenty of reasons you should be saving water. For one, it saves you money and energy, but it's also incredibly important for our environment and wildlife.

Did you know that Melbournians collectively consumer an average of 980 million litres per day? With our growing population and climate change making rainfall less reliable, we all need to do our part. If we each save a little, we can all save a lot!

Here are some of the easiest ways you can cut down your water consumption in your home. 

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Take shorter showers or swap to a water-saving Shower Head

If you install a water-efficient shower-head, you could save over 10,000 litres of water each year. While that sounds like a colossal amount of water, you don't actually have to make a huge sacrifice to cut that number down. A standard shower can use between 15 to 25 litres of water per minute - that's an approximate total of 120 litres of water for an eight minute shower. Simply make it a challenge to reduce that amount of time you spend in the shower for a big reward. 

By switching to an energy-efficient, three-star-rated shower-head, you can cut your hot water usage by a whopping 40 per cent! Here in Victoria (and many other parts of the country/ world), you can replace old shower heads with water-saving shower-heads for free under the Victorian Energy Saver scheme.

Taking a shower uses roughly one third of the amount of water used in taking a bath, depending on the size of your tub and depth of the water. So if you're one of the lucky ones with a bathtub in your home - save it for special occasions instead of every night. When you do take a bath- then re-use the water on your garden or lawn!

Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth

This one is a no brainer, and if you're still doing it..... It's small, mindless things like this that make all the difference!  

Use cold water to wash your clothes

A whopping 90 per cent of your washer's electricity use goes to heating the water, so simply using cold water will save you a tonne on your energy bills. Although some believe that washing with warm water is better for cleaning your clothes, we disagree! Using cold water to wash your clothes can help them look better and last longer as it minimises shrinkage and fading. 

Hang your clothes out to dry on a rack or clothes line if you can, as this saves *so* much unnecessary energy

Avoid Shaving in the shower

Having a small shower has forced me to shave my legs outside of the shower for over a year now, and I cannot even begin to imagine how much water that's saved us. I just wet my legs (and razor) with water from the tap, lather on some soap, and shave my legs propped up on the sink or toilet seat. Our Safety Razors are perfect for this as they won't irritate your skin either! 

My partner shaves his face out of the shower too, and uses the plug in the sink to keep enough water for him to rinse his Safety Razor as he shaves. 

Save *every* drop

As you begin to think about how you can save water at home, you'll start to notice so many ways that you can re-use water. For example, wash your veggies in a bowl instead of under the tap or keep a bucket in the shower to collect water for your garden. Keep your leftover water from cooking pasta or rice for your plants - simply wait until it's cooled down before using it! If you're able to, look into installing a rain-water tank to save + use for all sorts of things. 

Reduce your water consumption for washing dishes

Turns out dishwashers are better for water consumption over hand washing. As someone who's lived without a dishwasher in apartments for several years, this is devastating news! If you do have a dishwasher, wait until it's full before using it and switch to a water-saving setting! If you're washing by hand, fill the sink (or sinks) up instead of keeping the tap on. Make sure to wash cups + glasses first before the water gets dirty and save pots + pans until last!

We hope these tips can help you reduce your water intake in your day-to-day lives! Let us know if there's anything we missed in the comments below