Hi folks. Make-it-Green Girl here, with some more Quick and Dirty Tips for an Earth Friendly life. Today is another water saver -- this week, we'll talk about how you can save water in your kitchen.
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Cleaning
My mom kept a very clean house when I was little. After our nightly family dinners, she'd wash all the dishes and wipe down all the counters. Every week at least, she'd mop the floors with a sponge mop and bucket of soapy water. Not only did her kitchen look great, we didn't wake up in the morning to an army of ants picking through our leftovers.
Two things my family has learned since then:
- Nobody's perfect.
- The ants will come anyway.
So we might as well take a good look at your cleaning routine and cut out the waste.
Mopping Up
Mopping up the floor and cleaning the counters does not have to be a wet soapy mess. Nor do you need a whole lot of soap, water, or sterilizing chemicals like ammonia or bleach. Microfiber cleaning cloths can be the solution to your water-wasting blues.
Microfiber is a synthentic fabric with very small fibers that pick up very small particles of dirt and even bacteria. This property makes them great dusters and cleaners, because you don't even have to get them wet. They clean mechanically, not chemically like soaps and detergents do, and you just throw it in the wash when it's dirty. I still squirt a mild soap mixture on the floors before mopping up, because usually the stains have dried before I get to them. I'm a bit of an eco-slob...
Right now the microfiber market has a few problems, because the word microfiber is not yet regulated. So people can sell whatever they want under the term "microfiber." Make sure it's a brand you trust before investing.
If you really can't part from your sponge mop, try using a spray or squirt bottle to mix your soap and water before hand. When it's mopping up time, just spray a bit of the solution on the floor while you mop, instead of re-wetting it in a huge pail of soapy water each time. Squirt, mop; squirt, mop; squirt, mop.
Dishes
Dishes are another great opportunity to conserve: If you have a dishwasher, don't let it run partly full. Kids, this looks like a job for you! Help your parents load up the dishwasher after meals, and make sure it runs only when it's full of dirty dishes.
Most, if not all, dishwashers don't really know how many dishes are in the racks. Unlike smart clothes washers, there's no "small load" function. So make sure to load it up before turning it on.
If you don't have a dishwasher, or you can't seem to make enough dishes dirty fast enough to warrant using it, here are some hand-washing tips. Clean macro-food particles off your dishes with utensils, not water.
If your dishes are going to be in the sink for a while, fill them up with water and let them soap - don't fill up the whole sink with water unless you have the two sinks, one with soapy water, one with rinse water method. When you're ready to wash them, just soap them up with the faucet turned off. Once you've got everything good and scrubbed, then you can rinse. The important thing here is to make sure the water is never running when it's not cleaning something.
Leaky Faucets
Drip, drip, drip. You know that the sound is irritating. Drip, drip, drip. But did you know that a gallon of water or more could be going down the drain while your leaky faucet is keeping you up at night? For all you kids listening out there, this looks like a job for the kitchen-water-waste-commando squad; seek out those leaks, and destroy them.
An easy way to test for a leaky faucet is to place a cup under each one when you go to bed or before you go away on a long trip. Obviously, if there's water in the cup, and no one used the tap, you've got a leak. If your parent's can't fix it right away, collect that water to put on your plants.
Another way of detecting leaks that you might not notice is through your household water meter. If your water is metered (meaning the city measures how much you use), then your house has a device that detects how much water is going into and out of your house.
Get your parents to show you where it is. Before a trip out of the house where everyone in the family will be gone, write down the numbers that are scrolling by on the little dial. When you come back, check the number again. If the number has changed, then you've got a leak somewhere! Try your cup trick to find it, or ask your parents to check the appliances around the house.
Administrative
OK, folks, that's it for the kitchen, so get out there and do your green thing. Don't forget to check our your free trial of GoToMeeting at www.gotomeeting.com/podcast. All you Mac users out there like me are left behind no longer!
You can find a transcript of this show at www.quickanddirtytips.com. While you're there, you can check out the brand new listener survey button, and let us know what YOU think! If you have questions or comments about the show that you'd particularly like me to hear, send me an email at greengirl@quickanddirtytips.com, or leave me a voicemail at 206-600-3051.
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