Wasted Water.

I laughed (secretly!) at Dave's mum when she decided to keep a bucket by her kitchen sink to collect wasted water.....I thought it was a bit of a crackpot idea but I guess I have to admit that she was right!! A bucket suddenly appeared by our sink last week...... like mother, like son...... and I am actually slightly amazed (and shocked) at how much water we would normally waste just through one day. Every time we want hot water we run the tap until it warms up.....every time we want cold water we run the tap until it's nice and cold.....every time we empty and refresh our drink bottles that water goes straight down the plughole....it all adds up! We've started trying to collect it all in our handy bucket and we must be filling that bucket every day at least.

Even up here in the wet NW of England, our outside rain barrels are pretty much empty already, so this water has come in very handy to water our veggies when needed....water that would have been lost down the plughole! In this country we take it too much for granted that we will always have water readily available.

We haven't got onto all the waste water from washing up, baths etc yet but maybe that's something to look into in the near future. It must amount to a huge amount of useable water that ends up wasted......   

Amazing Nuts!!

One of the very first things we changed in our house was our washing powder, funnily enough we were really looking to save money, not so much thinking of how we could help cutting back on Phosphates etc. I had just joined a Frugal facebook group and someone had posted about these amazing little natural nuts which you could wash with, clean with, even make into soap.....I had to check it out just to make sure they weren't making it up!!  Well......I was hooked, ordered my first bagful off Ebay and we've been using them ever since. That was going back about a year now and for our family they work great, are much cheaper than washing powder or liquid and are completely natural..win, win. If you have really mucky clothes just put more soapnuts in the wash..simple!

( I know someone much further down the line of 'Green - ness' has mentioned that we should be making our own washing powder rather than importing these all the way from India, therefore raising our carbon footprint ....well maybe this is something for the future when this pack of soapnuts has finished...definately worth looking into. )

All we do with our soapnuts is pop about four into a small muslin bag, shove that into the washing machine with the washing and wash as normal. These amazing little nuts are also great for people with allergies and can be used in low temperature washes as well. I really can't tell you all the virtues of these and how I can't understand how so few people know about them!! This site is fantastic for learning all about them and how to use them in lots of different ways ..  Living Naturally - soapnuts