Wednesday 4 January 2012

How far can you stretch a bowl of water?

Good morning. Sneaking in a money saving tip here while I have got a minute. I don't like wasting water and will use it two or three times over to get the most use out of it.

Here we have a bowl of manky water. It started off as rinsing water after I washed my hair. Yes I prefer to use the sink for this job, one and a half kettles of boiled water is enough. If it is bath time I will hang my head over the bath and wash my hair before I immerse my whole body in the warm water, but in between times it's the sink.


Next I got a wiping cloth that I use for mucky jobs, a piece of old flannelette sheet, and wiped down the insides of the window frames in the whole house. At this point I will mention that I didn't add any cleaning agents to the water.

Then I wiped down the paintwork on some of the doors if they looked grubby. I wiped the inside of the front door in the porch, and some of the walls which are painted with gloss paint. It gets a bit of condensation in there.

Next I got down on my hands and knees and wiped the whole of the kitchen floor. It's got a vinyl covering and I want to keep it looking nice and clean. So there you go, one bowl of water, lots of job done. At this point I felt the water was too mucky to flush the loo with, so I chucked it down the drain. Now what did I do with those last Oxford photo's :o) Toodle pip.

14 comments:

  1. You bought back memories of washing my hair in the sink at home years ago, in fact everything was done in the same sink and a bath was taken in the tin one that hung on the wall outside, My mum used to boil up a large copper full of water and put the bath under the tap and we all used the same water.
    What luxury we live in now. lol
    Briony
    x

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  2. Go on - you should have flushed it down the loo! I have to own up to having a dishwasher but if I wash things in the sink I use the biggest pan or bowl that has been used for the meal.
    Love from Mum
    xx

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  3. We washed our hair in the sink. Mama washed our hair until we could do it ourselves. As adults, we three girls still wash our hair in the sink rather than in the shower. I only take baths since I don't have a shower in the claw foot tub and don't want one. Even in a hotel, I use the sink to wash my hair!

    That picture was pretty gross, and I am not easily grossed out. But, I understand why and what all you washed! You are better than I at saving water!

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  4. I'm pretty good at not using much water, last year the Water Company wrote to say that my bill was going down to £2.00 per month. If only I could be that parsimonious with the electricity!

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  5. Nice one! :) Your tips are always great!

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  6. Hee hee, I remember sitting in the Belfast sink and having a bath until we got too big for it.
    Good tips, thanks

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  7. I was a child of the sixties, the tin bath was brought in from outside, and we had a bath in the kitchen! I do admire you for making your water go so far. I have lived in Africa where many people have no clean drinking water, if more of us realised how blessed we are, we would be as careful as you are with the resources we have.

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  8. For condensation put a couple of drops of washing up liquid onto a cloth and rub over your windows this will help stop it. In the summer months when I want to remove the smears I use good old cornflour in warm water in a spray bottle brilliant for removing smears

    midlands annie

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  9. I'm not sure how you are charged for water and sewer in the UK, but in the US they measure how much water you have going into the sewer and charge more for that than they do the water coming in. I usually chuck my mop water, etc into the bushes unless I am using to flush the toilet.

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  10. I'm not on a water meter so I don't need to be so parsimonious but I don't waste it either!

    My mum always washed her hair and my dad's in the sink, so did I when I lived at home. I now wash mine in the bathroom sink. Don't have a shower and wouldn't use it for hairwashing if I did, wouldn't like wet hair all down my back!

    My mum always refers to "a bowlful of lovely soapy water" which is a throwback to the days when you had to heat it up beforehand.

    I manage to wash my whole self in the sink with very little water.

    I would be one of those 'if it's yellow let it mellow... brigade" but unfortunately husband is not of that ilk. So I just do what I can. Mind you when you see that it's been raining for weeks now mostly, then there's a water shortage!

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  11. Ilona, I forgot to mention, I was talking to the Mum of someone I worked with the other day. I was trying to get her to go on a bike ride with a Breeze group. It turned out that at 65 she was still working, and guess what - an HGV Class I driver! Her name is Margaret but I don't know what her surname is.

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  12. Crikey, looks like my gravy :-O

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  13. Thought of you as we ate our tea last night Ilona, January is always a cutback month and we try to live on what we already have. I found a tub of parsley sauce and a piece of plaice that I had bought fresh and frozen in September 2010 (!) it was very tasty with the last of a pack of new potatoes that I found in the fridge (sell-by date Oct 17th 2011) waste-not-want-not :0)

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