Avoiding Day Zero

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...