Avoiding Day Zero

Since December 20th, I have not taken a shower with running water. Instead, I have opted for bucket showers! I'm in the Philippines right now and we have some notoriously bad infrastructure. At where my mom grew up, we got open sewers, no running hot water. But it's completely different at the place my dad's side of the family owns. They have hot running water, air conditioning in almost every room, and semi-closed sewers. They have openings in the sidewalks where the water drains into. P.S. Don't walk on top of them. The smell is horrid. But there's one constant here: the air pollution is so awful it turned my boogers black. We have this bucket in the bathroom.  Each time I showered, I took a smaller bucket called a "tabo"  and used it to dump water on me to shower. I did this for every day, once a morning, for my trip to the Philippines besides the first day when I was on my flight. I could see how much water I was using each time I showere...

I discovered there was a button on my showerhead that restricts water flow! This is some new age technology in my old era home. Instead of having to turn off the water every time I want to stop the water. I feel like I'm becoming too complacent when I shower. The other day, on Tuesday, I spent two minutes under the water instead of just 1 minute. I feel like my hair takes up a lot of the water (which is a waste). I might consider cutting my hair soon to spend less time getting it wet and rinsing it. Overall, I'm doing a good job by not leaving the shower on for more than one minute at a time. The ramp up time for the water heater is still a pain though. By running the water for only 1 minute instead of 10 minutes, I use 2 gallons instead of 20 gallons with my low flow showerhead ( USGS , 2016). If I shower every day, I'll save 18 gallons per day, 126 gallons per week, 540 gallons every 30 days, or 6570 gallons each year. If everyone in Seattle did this behavior: Acc...

My bathroom has no insulation. Turning off the water while I shower is painfully cold. The heat is fleeting. I don't think I can last much longer. I stuck to turning off the water while I soap up for the entire week and I shower every day. Every morning, I got in, got wet, got soapy, and rinsed it off. But I feel like I'm failing. I don't want to jump in the shower when it's cold, especially in the winter without insulation in my bathroom. So I wait. I wait for the water to get warm. I've even measured how long it takes for my shower to warm up. It takes an entire minute for my shower to warm up. Even with a low flow shower head, I'm already wasting 2.5 gallons of water just waiting for the water to warm up ( DoE ). The infrastructure is old and needs to be rebuilt, so the water heats up in just a few seconds. It feels like I'm down in California, rationing water as much as I can. Even though it's less comfortable, I've been arriving at the manda...