Never ending

 The Elephant In The Room

It is me again writing about water. Or rather, the lack of it. The summer has been too dry and nature is looking as if it's going into autumn too early but in fact, the plants are suffering from dryness. 

There was some rain, our water barrels in the garden are not all empty, but it was not enough to keep the water table at a safe level. The fact is that we take too much water out of the system. We all need to save water. We all think that we are not using too much water but since I saved water in the kitchen and ran the water I use to wash fruit, vegetables and salad into a bucket, I noticed how much it actually takes to prepare a meal. That can easily amount to 40 - 50 liters, depending what you are cooking. I must admit, that it is hard work and uncomfortable to slog the buckets out into the garden but then I imagine how uncomfortable it would be if I would turn my tap on and nothing came out.

Another area where we are using too much water is washing and showering. Nobody wants to be smelly wearing dirty clothes but do you need a shower 3x a day? Or even every day? Would not a wash do it? 

I will tell you about my grandfather. My mother told me the story how he used to wash. With one washbowl of water he would clean his teeth, dunk his comb in to comb his hair (that was all that it got), then he would wash his body and in the end he put the bowl on the floor to wash his feet. I don't know how clean he actually was afterwards, but the water was definitely dirty and well used. This definitely saved a lot of water but I'm not sure if this is the way to go about it.

Well, everybody has their way of feeling comfortable but I'm quite sure it will not be a problem to use a little bit more water for your personal hygiene. 

The other end of the spectrum is when people wash too often. Compulsive handwashing has nothing to do with hygiene, it means that it is time to see me.