Our Grand dogs Rosie and Riley are ready for Halloween. For them it is not mean or cruel to dress them up because they like it :) They think they are children anyway so they want to take part in anything that is fun. I thought this would brighten your day.
When I posted about our outdoor bath and laundry area little did I know that we were on our way to a drought.
We have been trying to reduce and reuse our grey water even before we started going into a drought. When we garden we become more aware of the needs of the small plot of earth that we reside. We understand the importance of water, too little or too much and how we can deplete or enrich the soil.
We are constantly learning and trying to do better. No matter what our age we can always work on doing better. We realize how much we have wasted in our lifetime so it has become more urgent to do the best we can to conserve and not waste.
We try to recycle, reuse and repurpose.
We are especially focusing on water right now because our drought is worsening.
Yesterday we had the plumber come out to install a toilet that uses less water. This one only uses 1.8 gallons compared to our 1960 five gallon toilet. I am happy we did this.
When I am outside doing laundry all the water goes for watering something. We are focusing a lot on our new blueberry bushes and pear tree that we recently planted. I hope we can keep them alive.
I brought in our camper washer and when I do not feel like hand washing the laundry I am using the Panda Washer and letting it drain into the buckets and my husband will carry it out to the yard to water something that needs it.
We are having to make decisions what to water and what to let go. We are going to let our leaves stay in place for now so it will hopefully keep moisture in the soil. The leaves have been falling only for a few weeks so there is much to fall from the trees.
I made another handwashing area by our back door so when we come inside and wash our hands we wash here and step outside and water a plant.
At night we normally take a glass of water to bed and put it on our night stands. If we have any left we pour it into our bucket in the kitchen that sits on the floor instead of pouring it down the drain.
When we empty what was left in the thermos we pour that into the bucket too.
When the dogs water gets low and it is time to clean the crock we pour that water in the bucket.
When I clean the crock I pour that water in the bucket too. We collect any extra water we can to reuse outside.
It is now getting to be habit to save the water. We are having baked potatoes for dinner and my husband put one of the plastic produce bags in the sink to catch the water from cleaning the potato.
This potato water is going outside to water some transplanted chrysanthemums.
Every little bit helps. We could use the water right out of the faucet and we have to do that too but this saves the amount of fresh water we use.
We also reuse our bath water, our dish rinse water, I do let the dish wash water go down the drain because it has food particles in the water.
I know there are other parts of our country and around the world experiencing drought too. I thought I would share what we are doing.
Grandma Donna
