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Bathing- over-rated as a health mantenance measure.. In fact, if you don't bathe regularly, you'll probably wind up with fewer colds--> fewer peole will come close. We bathe frequently now more to provide a social function than a medical function.
Dishes/cookware-- use sand to rub away residue and wipe with a dry clothe or even foilage. Use ashes as an alkali to help mobilize fats and oils if necessary. Pretend you're wilderness backpacking.
Toilets-- You're located remotely. Try a latrine or pit style outhouse. No need for water.
Cooking-- best nutrition is from meat & potatoes anyways. You don't need water for either.
Drinking-- This is why God gave us beer.
Clothes washing-- drive occassionaly to the closest river and beat them on the rocks like your greatgrandmother did--although, with the price of gas now and your remote location, it might be cheaper just to throw dirty clothes out and buy new ones.
Good luck.
Conserving water is easy......but it is difficult to make, unlike electricity, so don't waste it.
First separate your drinking water from you "other water".
It doesn't take much for preparing food and drinking water. Probably a gallon a day at most.
Your toilet using LOTS of water. In my RV, I did not want to de-winterize my RV. So just peed in my RV and then dumped it every week or so into the septic. You don't need water to flush pee in a RV.
You can use an outhouse for poop.
Clothes washing is a weekly affair. Do it when you buy food in town.
Cooking. Just wipe out the frying pan with paper towels. You don't need to wash it.
Use a microwave to cook food. You don't need to add water to vegetables. Wet a paper towel and throw over the vegetables.
Learn to BBQ.
Use paper plates and paper towels.
You can use plastic cutlery, but if not take a empty disinfecting wipes container, add water and soap and throw your cutlery in there and wash once every couple of days.
Showers, buy a 5-gallon solar shower and fill that with rain or stream water. Heat in the sun and that is a pretty good shower. You will save water and electricity to heat it.
As a forester, that spent many months in the back country without water or electricity, it is so easy to conserve both these days. You can live a very comfortable life without much water or electricity these days.
It is the urban folks that are spoiled and waste resources for no good reason.
It is the urban folks that are spoiled and waste resources for no good reason.
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Good post. Good point.
Maybe the best advice is the trivially obvious-- Don't live where God didn't intend us to live. If we were supposed to live in the desert, we'd have humps and scales. (and if He wanted us to fly, He'd have given us tickets.)
Decades ago, the Israelis aggressively appropriated and occuppied The Golan Heights to ensure the security of their fresh water supply...Since then, they've successfully engineered desalinaization plants for sea water and now have so much fresh water that they actually export it to surroundng, arid countries....We consulted them for help in doing it here too, but the Treehuggers in CA obstructed their plans.
It's dificult to protect the envronment when so many people who know so little about it control the narrative.
When water goes down the drain, its not like it falls off the face of the planet! It goes to a water treatment facility if you live in a city, and there is almost no loss. If you're on a septic tank, it goes back to the earth. Water is always fully recycled unless its contaminated w/ pollutants. Water availability is always local too. Some places have far too much (think Portland's constant drizzle, Gulf Coast's storms, etc) and some places have too little (deserts). So some places you have more than you need, others you need to conserve it.
Got the well supply fixed. Had a new solar powered pump put in for the well. Costly but shouldn't be a problem for another 6-10 years. My tank controller has on its menu options for solar, wind, and one other. Maybe that will be future project. The controller does tell me in a primitive graphic how filled the tank is.
I got a second storage tank put in, increasing my above ground capacity by another 80% or so. More easy breathing....but not on easy street, of course. The black polymer tank keeps the white cement tank filled. That project was only 60% as expensive as I thought it might be.
I am still following many of my previous practices. Toilets off except for use, shower warm up water into coolers, yesterday's coffee to soften food before washing. Half way conservation when filling the kittens' water dishes such as not always turning off the faucet when one is filled and I am putting it in place before having the next one there. I am also putting out a watering dish for the wild .... though I don't know which of the wild I am supplying. Evaporation? Squito Eaters? White Tailed Somethings?
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