Look around your house, and you’ll find countless small ways to avoid wasting money . From turning off lights to turning off faucets, there are little things that may save a few pennies or dollars, but they add up over the long term.
Reducing your water consumption is a good place to start. You can make tweaks to help cut your usage, and over time, these will add up to an overall lower bill at the end of the month.
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1. Turn off the faucet
The childhood jingle “never let the water run” was on to something. Whether you’re brushing your teeth, scrubbing the dishes, or washing your hands, there’s no need to let the water run unless you’re actively using it.
Turn off the faucet to use up to 200 gallons less a month.
Are you a homeowner? Don't let unexpected home repairs drain your bank account. 2. Take showers instead of baths
A bath uses significantly more water than a shower — just try filling up your bath while you take a shower if you need a visual. A five-minute shower uses 10 to 25 gallons of water at most, while a bath uses roughly 70 gallons.
A bath might be nice but think about the cost each time you’re tempted to grab your rubber ducky.
3. Take shorter showers
You probably don’t need a leisurely 20-minute shower to get clean. If a five-minute shower uses 10 to 25 gallons of water, multiply that for every five additional minutes you decide to relax under the hot water. Is it worth it?
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A leaky faucet might seem like nothing more than a pesky annoyance, but it has real implications for your water bill. If your leaky faucet has 10 tiny drops of water every minute, that eventually adds up to one gallon of water per day.
5. Repair toilet leaks
If your toilet is incessantly running, it will drive up your water bill to the tune of eight gallons of water an hour. It seems unbelievable that a quietly running toilet could waste that much water, but it adds up to nearly 200 gallons per day.
6. Use your dishwasher
Handwashing might seem like an energy-efficient decision, but it takes more water to hand wash a dish than to run a full dishwasher (the caveat is, that it needs to be full). It can take up to 24 gallons more to hand wash your dishes than to use the dishwasher.
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When you pre-rinse your dishes, you use up to 15 gallons of water within several minutes. With today’s dishwashers, there’s typically no need to wash them twice. Skip it to save water.
8. Wait to run your dishwasher
Unless there are extenuating circumstances, don’t run your dishwasher with less than a full load. Efficient dishwashers will use six gallons of water per load, but if you run it with only half a load, what’s the point?
You’ll run it twice as often, wasting six gallons of water when you could have waited. Over a month, if you run it every day instead of every other day, that’s 90 unnecessary gallons.
9. Don’t use the garbage disposal
Using the garbage disposal requires you to run the water, but if you compost instead, you’ll save up to five gallons of water each time you would’ve used the garbage disposal. Plus, you’ll get nutrients for your garden.
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10. Use a low-flow showerhead
If you upgrade your shower head to a low-flow version, it’ll only use 2.5 gallons per minute, less than half of traditional shower heads, which use 5.5 gallons per minute. During a five-minute shower, that saves 15 gallons.
11. Replace your toilet flapper
A toilet flapper can contribute to a running toilet, which, as you now know, can waste up to 200 gallons of water per day. These should be replaced once a year or so. If you haven't thought about your toilet flapper in a while, now’s the time to replace it.
12. Replace old toilets with low-flow models
New low-flow toilets use much less water per flush than older models. You can save two gallons per flush, which adds up throughout the day, particularly if you have several people in your household.
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13. Water your yard efficiently
Yard irrigation is one of the biggest culprits of water consumption. Ten minutes of daily irrigation can use nearly 20,000 gallons of water monthly.
To be smart about irrigation, water in the evening or morning when the water won’t immediately evaporate, and install low-flow systems. An even better move is to switch to drought-tolerant landscaping and save on irrigation altogether.
14. Use a broom rather than a hose
If there’s debris on your sidewalk, use a broom to clean it off rather than turning on the hose. Even hosing down your sidewalk for two minutes can use up to 34 gallons of water per minute.
15. Investigate when your bill goes up
If you notice that your water bill has suddenly skyrocketed, don’t just pay it blindly. Instead, investigate whether there’s a leak or other cause that can be remedied. Often, there’s something you can do to help fix the situation.
Bottom line
If you add up all the gallons saved from these fixes, you would have nearly 40,000 gallons of water per month. That number sounds enormous—and it is.
These tips not only cut your water bill and help boost your bank account , but they also impact your water consumption and the environment.
Are you ready for the final tally of how these gallons translate into dollars and cents? Saving 40,000 gallons could save you $60 every month.
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