You don’t adequately value water until you can’t get it easily. Whether a storm knocking the power out, or a well failure, or just off-grid living, you need to know how to use less water. Plus, water is not usually free. It costs either money or work to get. Here are tips to use less water and get more use out of what you have.

Re-Purpose Greywater
you don’t need to flush usable water into the sewer or septic tank. Wash water is good for garden use, and the soap residue acts as a phosphorus fertilizer. You can collect wash water with a simple bucket under the sink trap, and water your garden with it. You can also use it to fill a toilet tank. A more complex system involves routing grey water (sinks, tubs, showers, washing machine) to a separate collection pond or in-ground barrel.
A simple hand pump will bring the water up to a bucket, or large-diameter pipe for gravity-fed irrigation systems. Also, most greywater can be reused for cleaning something else and it already contains some soap and detergent. A highly efficient clothes washer uses 13 to 15 gallons per load. at one load a day, that’s 5,000 gallons a year of water you can save. We made a small pond and piped our wash water through a separate drain out to it. Of course, we also use soaps and detergents that are gentle enough to not harm the frogs and salamanders that live there now. My wife has become a big fan of homemade soap and soap nuts for that reason.
Hand Wash Bowl
Fill a bowl with water and use it to wash your hands with soap. After a few uses, the bowl will be full of soap water and won’t need more soap. Even if the water gets dirty-looking, it will still wash dirt and kill germs with the soap. Use a second, clean-water bowl for a rinse. This method can wash thirty pair of hands in a day without needing tossed out. I used this method for a long time when I didn’t have running water and had to haul in my clean water or go melt snow.

Water Gardens in the Dark
Sunshine causes water to dry up. Using sprinklers in the daytime leads to massive evaporation. Limit this by watering in the early morning or evening when it has a chance to soak in before evaporation. Also, watering faster (more volume at once) allows more to soak in and less to evaporate. I figure that roughly half of my sprinkler water evaporates before it can soak in. It’s worse in hotter weather. Don’t forget mulch to keep the soil moist as will save you many repeated waterings.
Build an Outhouse
Not for everyone, but an outhouse can save 14 gallons of water per day per person. For a family of 5, that’s 70 gallons. Toilets use roughly 2 gallons per flush. Most people have ‘the call of nature’ 7 or 8 times a day. That’s 2 barrels of water per person each week. A good outhouse design doesn’t stink much. If you are permitted one in your area, consider it. But, downwind of the house ‘eh?
Any other tips? Write and let us know.