Our water verdict

May not seem like a big deal to you....
especially if you live outside California.

But this is the first time in 25 years of living here, that I was
ANXIOUS and cautiously EXCITED to get our water bill.
And it came today!
(along with Bill's high school reunion invite, I might add)

Den thought we would make the required 36% cut on our water. 
I didn't think we would. 

I didn't think we had suffered enough for that. 
Or I thought it would be close.

WRONG. 

It was not close at all. Look at this bill.

If we are figuring it out correctly, comparing to 2013,
we cut back our water by 60%!


It was for the past 2 months....June and July. 
The city compares it to June and July of 2013


(And to those people who criticized us for having a green front lawn last month, apparently we cut
back more water than you thought! That's okay, we forgive you. We know you were just looking after
mankind in California. Besides, it's dead now.)

 We are celebrating tonight by watering our lemon tree. 
It's not looking very good.

So we won! That's what it feels like anyway.
Our lawn is dead, and some of our trees 
are barely hanging on (oops). 
Sorry to brag. 

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ours went from $200+ last July to $140 this July. We were proud of that. We plan to do more. Don't you have a swimming pool? That must take a lot of water to fill and maintain. We have a lot of trees that are on automatic watering. We are actually letting some of our trees die. (Only the ones that need the most water and are not thriving anyway.) I think the thing that saved us the most was switching to all-electric cooling. We had a swamp cooler before that uses a lot of water to run.
Congratulations for your efforts! Well done!
darlene

Grandma Honey said...

Darlene, you have always been conservative....so to bring that down another $60. is amazing. We just started conserving water this summer so we had plenty room for improvement. We do have the pool and it does take water to keep it level, but I don't think all that much....especially this summer since no one has used it.

Anonymous said...

Congrats on conserving water! You did very very good. Did you save gray water? During our drought in '88, we saved every drop of water we could, such as washing hands over a basin, and used it to flush the toilet, water plants, reheat and reuse. To this day, we still save water from dish washing and throw it out the door on my plants.
I had never seen a water bill in my life so I found yours interesting. We own our well water and a septic system so we can use all the water we want for free.....as long as the well doesn't go dry. Our recycling is free but we have to take it to a recycling center. And our streets get cleaned by Mother Nature. It would be interesting if we had a water meter to tell us how much we use. Pam

Grandma Honey said...

No we have not tried saving water indoors to take outdoors, but I like that idea. I wish there were some kind of tall bucket on wheels with a siphon hose attached that I could suck up bath water, for example, and then roll it outside.

Scrapally said...

Great job!

Anonymous said...

That "tall bucket on wheels with a siphon hose attached" is called a shop vac. It works great and comes in various sizes.
In the 'olden days' we scooped water from the bathtub with a small bowl and collected it in a small pail or dishpan to toss outdoors on plants. We would even run a garden hose from the washer to the garden. Hardly any water made it down the drain. We did not lose any trees or plants but the grass turned brown. Pam in MI

Anonymous said...

That "tall bucket on wheels with a siphon hose attached" is called a shop vac. It works great and comes in various sizes.
In the 'olden days' we scooped water from the bathtub with a small bowl and collected it in a small pail or dishpan to toss outdoors on plants. We would even run a garden hose from the washer to the garden. Hardly any water made it down the drain. We did not lose any trees or plants but the grass turned brown. Pam in MI

Lisa said...

Way to Go!!! Dennis & Carol won too! Carol tells me if you give me rules...I can follow them quite well!

Susan Anderson said...

That's remarkable.

Our lawn is dead, too, and we are doing lots of water saving measures. Hope our bill reflects that!

=)

Anonymous said...

So awesome! This reminds me of Grandma Lella who use to save her dish water to water her plants during a drought in the 70s. I've occasionally tried to save my shower water to water plants with(thinking of our grandma), but not enough to brag about.

Heidi

Look what happened last night

  Just a little pre-graduating gathering for our DIL Amy.... Not everyday a Mom of 7 and a Grandma of 7, graduates from college. It was not ...