Saving Water

Reading on the Internet, I came across a post by a woman who had attempted to save water by hand-washing her dishes.  To her dismay, she wrote, rinsing each dish under a faucet of running water actually used more water to clean the dishes than the dishwasher did. She gave up the idea.

Well, Honey, that ain’t how it was done. Having grown up in a household that depended on a cistern for water, I knew every trick in the book for saving water, and had I not used them, my mother and Grandma Alice would have scolded me severely.

I knew I could “fill” my bath with two inches of water, part of which I heated in a teakettle on the kitchen stove. Our old Maytag washing machine in the basement was filled just once each week with water, also heated on the kitchen stove, and used to wash everything in the laundry. No refills. We rinsed the laundry in a separate tub, filled with cold water. This water, too, was used to rinse the entire laundry. No refills. 

And when it came to dishwashing, we used two dishpans that hung on nails on the kitchen wall, one for washing, and the other for drying. We heated two kettles full of water on the stove, and poured some into each dishpan. We washed in one, dunked the dish in the other and handed it to the person who was waiting, dishcloth in hand. ready to dry and put the dish away. So, that’s how it was done. There was no running of water over each dish. They all went into one dishpan full of water.

The dishpans were enamelware, like this one offered on eBay for $16.95.

The general principal was to wash the cleanest things first, and so on down the line until only the dirtiest remained. For example, first wash the glassware, then the tableware, then the plates and bowls, and finally, the pots and pans. In the case of laundry, first wash the white things such as white shirts, sheets and pillowcases. Then bath towels, followed by colored dresses, shirts and underwear, then Dad’s work clothes and, finally, rags. My friend Yvonne’s family, who lived in the country, even extended this principle to bathing the family, from cleanest to dirtiest, in a round galvanized tub on their screened-in back porch in summer and by the wood-burning kitchen stove in winter.

Every drop of water was used, you see, until it was too dirty to use. Even then, we carried the used dishwater outside to pour on the flowerbed by the back door.  Our gutters were equipped with a moveable spout, and when rain came, Dad let the first few minutes go by to wash off the roof, then went outside to switch the spout to drain into our cistern.  That was our water supply and we hoarded it until the next rain.

                                                                                                        

Want to give that life-style a try?

Copyright 2018 by Shirley Domer

                                            

No Impact Lingers On

Participating in Carol’s No Impact Week didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I felt certain that I was doing most of the right things to help protect our environment. No Impact week turned that attitude around. I have been doing plenty of things that damage the environment. No Impact Week taught me to look at my behavior and at social customs in a new light.

The first eye-opener, which I’ve already written about, was attending one social gathering after another where huge bags of used plastic were carted away after we ate. What could I do to change that, I wondered. Finally I’ve decided that in the future I will carry my own plate, cup or glass, and utensils and carry them back home with me to wash and use again. I believe that preaching won’t change anyone’s behavior, but maybe a demonstration could.

Mostly, though, I watch my habits at home and have been shocked to see how much water we have thoughtlessly wasted. Our house has powerful water pressure, possibly because we live not far from the Rural Water District Number Two tower. Rinsing dirty dishes used to involve letting a powerful stream of water wash away the debris! That, I must say, was foolish. I was using potable water – a scarce resource in many parts of the word – to do what a little elbow grease would have accomplished in a few seconds. Now we use a wet scrubber to clean off egg yolk and other food debris that would not come off in the dishwasher.

Hand-washing pots and pans and other things not suitable for the dishwasher used to involve half-filling one side of our double sink with hot water and a squirt of liquid dish detergent. Of course I rinsed each washed item with a full stream of hot water. That has changed now. Instead, I select the largest bowl or cooking pot to be washed and run a little hot water and a smaller squirt of dishwashing detergent into it. This vessel become the dishpan in which I wash everything else. Objects don’t need to be completely submerged in dishwater to be cleaned. Even a large pan can be held over the sudsy water to be washed. I also use only a trickle of water to rinse the washed things, and collect several small items to rinse simultaneously.

Next I’m going to purchase a small enamel dishpan, if such things are still made. The ones I remember were big around but rather shallow. When I was a girl ours hung on a nail on the inside of the cabinet below the kitchen sink.

Isn’t it odd how many of the old ways have been lost when they were so smart and frugal?

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer