As the summer months approach, unless your climate area is fortunate enough to rain in the morning every day, giving your grass the needed watering per day, there is no way around running the sprinklers. While this can inflate your water bill to maybe even double the amount, now would be a good time to evaluate how much water you are using on a daily basis and try and make the necessary cuts. Like anything else, saving a little a day will add up over the course of the week, a month, let alone your quarterly water bill. Here are a few quick tips to help jump start the summer months with a few extra dollars in your pocket.
Stop Leaving the Water On
What may be common sense, the longer the water is running, the more money is racking up on your water bill, but you would be surprised how much you are actually wasting. Do you run the water the entire time you brush your teeth? You probably do, and besides rinsing your tooth brush and mouth out is really only time the water needs to be running, so most of that is waste. Same idea goes with hand washing dishes. When it comes to washing, as nice as it is to stand there and enjoy a nice long hot shower, you should limit the number of times you actually do that and stick to just getting in, cleaning, and getting out, limiting to under 10 minutes.
Get a Rain Barrel
Sure that may sound like a hipster thing to do, but a rain barrel is actually a smart way to catch the rain water to use for watering flowers or gardens, without inflating your water bill and reducing the amount the drainage into the sewers. Especially in April and May when it seems like it rains most of the week, will be a good time to capture rain water to last you most of the summer. Try it, you will like it.
Run Only When Full
Running only when you have full loads of dishes and laundry will reduce the number of gallons, and dollars, spent. Sure you can adjust the size of the wash load for your clothes, but it still takes plenty of gallons to wash and rinse so unless you really need that one item, wait until the laundry basket is full.
I know that saving money on a water bill sounds like a trivial amount of money in the grand scheme of things. However, if you start thinking small, it can lead to substantial savings. First it’s the water bill, then it’s the electric, and eventually the heating bill. If you continue to make efforts to save money across the board it will eventually add up to a sizable chunk of money that can in turn lead to an extra vacation a year, or even investing for your future. I would take every dollar you could and invest for a secure retirement one day.
