Runaway October

No, I’m not in the fam­ily way again.

Re-Nest is one of my favorite “green” blogs. They always have such awe­some finds and thought pro­vok­ing options. One of their most lat­est posts as got me think­ing about our water usage. This is Ari­zona after all and we need to be more con­scious of how we use it.

We have a gravel back­yard but I hate it. The whole thing is dirt and rock. This means mas­sive amounts of gravel through my vac­uum and dirt bun­nies form on every sur­face within 20 feet of the back door. While we save a ton of water by not hav­ing a lawn, part of me still really wants a soft sur­face in the back­yard. I think it would be a place that we all spend more time.

• Wild­flower Farm has drought tol­er­ant wild­flower mixes, as well as Eco-Lawn which seems like it could be well-suited for even the dri­est climate.
• Zoysia Farms has a zoysia grass that is also sup­posed to be able to sur­vive Ari­zona heat, but needs far less water than con­ven­tional grass.

We also still dream of hav­ing a pool some­day. Not only do they require a large amount of water to begin with, but the evap­o­ra­tion rate is super high here and repairs can lead to drain­ing it often.

• So, I have my eye on one of these swim­ming “ponds”
• Aren’t they awe­some? I don’t know if they would cut the use of water, but at least we wouldn’t be swim­ming in chlo­rine or dump­ing it into the reten­tion basins.

We typ­i­cally wash our dishes by hand, but that’s mainly because Declan could wash our dishes and get them cleaner than our “inex­pen­sive” old dish­washer can. There have been stud­ies that show that using a dish­washer is more effi­cient than wash­ing by hand, but not just any dish­washer. It also seems hard to believe that a dish­washer uses less energy and water than a water-conscious man­ual washer. The only prob­lem is we use a high vol­ume of water hand­wash­ing because Declan insists on helping.

Another one of our biggest water wasters is well, Matt. Most of the men in my life have been quick shower-ers. I’m talk­ing like 5 min­utes or so. Not Matt. Some­how it takes him 30 min­utes to wash the 2 inches of hair on his head. Some­days he takes 2 and 3 show­ers a day! Even with the 2.5 gpm shower heads, that’s 75 gal­lons a shower times 3. What I really need is a way to con­vince every­one to stop using so much water. (Though here I am talk­ing about a swim­ming pond.)

Any­way, any other water con­serv­ing ideas or stud­ies out there?

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