Things You Can Do In The Bathroom To Save Water

• Check your toilet for leaks.  Put a few drops of food coloring in your toilet tank.  If the coloring appears in the bowl without flushing, you have a leak that may be wasting 100 gallons of water a day.
• Stop using your toilet as an ashtray or wastebasket.  Every cigarette butt or tissue you flush away also flushes away 5-7 gallons of water.
• Put a plastic bottle in your toilet tank.  Put an inch or two of sand or pebbles in the bottom of a quart bottle to weigh it down.  Fill the rest of the bottle with water and put it in your toilet tank safely away from the operating mechanism.  In an average home, the bottle may save five gallons or more of water every day without harming the efficiency of the toilet.
• Take shorter showers.  A shower uses 5-10 gallons of water a minute.  Limit your showers to the time if takes to soap up, wash down and rinse off.
• Install water-saving shower heads or flow restrictors.  Your hardware store stocks inexpensive shower heads or flow restrictors that will cut your shower flow to about 3 gallons a minute instead of 5-10.  They are easy to install.
• Take baths.  A partially filled tub uses less water than all but the shortest shower.
• Turn off the water while brushing your teeth.  Before brushing, wet brush and fill glass for rinsing your mouth.
• Turn off water while shaving.  Fill the bottom of the sink with a few inches of warm water in which to rinse your razor.
• Check faucets and pipes for leaks.  Even a small drip can waste 50 or more gallons of water a day.

Things You Can Do To Save Water In The Kitchen And Laundry

• Use your automatic dishwasher for full loads.  Every time you run your dishwasher, you use about 25 gallons of water.
• Use your automatic washing machine for full loads.  Your automatic washer uses 30-35 gallons a cycle.
• Don’t let the faucet run while cleaning vegetables.  Rinse your vegetables in a bowl or sink full of clean water.
• Keep a bottle of drinking water in the refrigerator.  This puts a stop to the wasteful practice of running tap water to cool it for drinking
• If you wash dishes by hand don’t leave the water running for rinsing.  If you have 2 sinks, fill with rinse water.  If you have only one sink first gather all your washed dishes in a dish rack, and then rinse them quickly with a sprat device or pan of water.
• Check faucets and pipes for leaks.  Leaks waste water 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  An inexpensive washer is usually enough to stop them.
  

Things You Can Do To Save Water Outside

• Water your lawn only when it needs it.  Watering on a regular schedule doesn’t allow for cool spells or rainfall which reduces the need for watering.  Step on some grass, if it springs back up when you move your foot, it doesn’t need water.
• Deep-soak your lawn.  When you do water your lawn, water it long enough for water to seep down to the roots where it is needed.  A light sprinkling that sits on the surface will simply evaporate and be wasted.
• Water during the cool parts of the day.  Early morning is better than dusk since it helps prevent the growth of fungus.
• Don’t water the gutter.  Position your sprinklers so that water lands on your lawn or garden, not in the areas where it does no good.  Also, avoid watering on windy days when much of your water may be carried off to the streets or sidewalks.
• Plant drought resistant trees and plants.
• Put a layer of mulch around trees and plants.  Mulch slows the evaporation of moisture.
• Use a broom to clean driveways, sidewalks and steps.  Using a hose wastes hundreds and hundreds of gallons of water.
• Don’t run the hose while washing your car.  Soap down your car from a pail of soapy water.  Use a hose only to rinse it off
• Tell your children not to play with the hose and sprinklers.  This practice is extremely wasteful of precious water and should be discouraged.
• Check for leaks in pipes, hoses, faucets and couplings. Leaks outside the house can be even more wasteful than inside water leaks especially when they occur on your main service line.