The latest tool in our drive for self-sufficiency is deceptively simple. It’s a funnel. A big one, granted, but a simple funnel nonetheless that we bought on the market at the weekend.
We’re using it to fill two watering cans with all the water we use in the kitchen sink, and it’s quite an eye-opening exercise. Despite having two watering cans sitting out in the outhouse ready for all our tip-aways, we’re having to empty them onto the plants a couple of times a day each just to keep up with the supply.
It’s shocking how much water we used to tip away just because we’d used it to wash our hands or rinse some vegetables, and although we’re not doing this to save money it is obviously going to have quite an impact on the water bill when most of our vegetables are now watered from either the water butt (free water) or second hand water from the kitchen (already paid for once).
The tomatoes have never been watered so often in their lives.
I can’t recommend saving grey water strongly enough. It’s maybe the best recycling move we have ever made. I’m a convert.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow.
.
So simple and so effective…
But it means you have to use a bowl instead of filling the kitchen sink itself?
That’ll take some getting used to
Now that you know it’s worth doing, isn’t there some way you can automate the process? So that the grey water goes direct to a butt outside the kitchen? So that you can write a post and let us all know how to do it, so that we can skip the first step?
Thanks for a thought-provoking post
Joanna
This sounds like a good idea – but you’re not using the dirty washing up water are you? I mean it’s just dirty ‘clean’ water if you see what I mean. Do you know of any (simple!) way that washing up water can be made suitable for using on the plants? Meanwhile I think we’ll try and do this at home.
Thanks
Jackie