My recipe for cutting your shower to two minutes while still enjoying it. This will save a lot of water and help you to feel really good about yourself.
Optional extras:
a. To reduce water consumption: shave your head. No need to shampoo, condition or blow-dry. And no bad-hair days!
b. Purchase a shower timer. Approx $10-15 from your local hardware store.
c. Use a Rinnai Infinity instantaneous gas hot water service. This lets you set the hot water temperature – to the degree – which means that you don’t have to mix hot and cold, nor do you heat the water to 60-70deg and then cool it back down again. Or better yet, get solar hot water.
Now, to the recipe:
- Set shower timer to 2 minutes.
- Start timer.
- Start shower.
- Wet your body all over.
- Turn off shower.
- Pause timer.
- Use soap or your preferred product to lather and clean all over.
- Resume timer.
- Turn on shower.
- Rinse off.
- Enjoy remaining 30-60s of luxuriating hot water. If you choose to grow hair, use this time to rinse out the shampoo, then repeat steps 5-10 for conditioner.
- Turn shower off when timer indicates, or earlier for extra brownie points.
Additional water-saving tips:
- Guys, don’t run the tap while you’re shaving. Just run a little hot water into the basin and use that.
- Everyone, don’t run the tap while you’re brushing your teeth.
I managed to have a fantastic shower while camping recently using a bucket and about 7-8 litres of rainwater, using essentially the steps above.
Next task: to convince lunatic farmers that inland Australia is not an appropriate place to grow rice! Sheesh…