“Drought conditions straining state’s water resources; DNR urges conservation”. This is a headline in the last issue of our little Morrison County Record. Wow! People in the southwest have gotten used to conserving water, but not Minnesota which is among the states clustered around the Great Lakes and dotted with 10,000 little ones.
Well, I am ready to conserve. I already conserve although I’ve gotten a little loose over the years. I just need to tighten up a bit. But I have to say, I think conserving water can be quite a burden to lots of people.
When I am in the homes of my children, I often am drawn to do their laundry. I like to be helpful and need to keep busy even though they might say, “Oh, Mom, relax.” I am bored if I sit around and do nothing. My mother, when she moved close to us in her last years, always did my laundry. I understand why now. It is one of the less intrusive things a person can do for another unless having someone wash your unders is too personal for you. What I notice as I help them is that people nowadays wash clean clothes. In my day, we only washed dirty clothes. Do you think I am kidding? I mean, really, if you wear a turtle neck under a sweatshirt, is the sweatshirt all that dirty? In fact, the turtle neck isn’t necessarily dirty enough to wash after each wear, in my opinion.
I use the “see and sniff” method to decide if something should be washed or not. I look to see if an item is actually dirty or has spots on it. Then I sniff it to see if it has an odor. If it does not stink or look bad I do something really, really radical: I HANG IT UP.
Now we get down to the truth of the matter. When a person is used to undressing at night it is easier to drop their day clothes to the floor or into a basket and then throw them into the washing machine instead of taking the time to see, sniff and hang each item. (Unders don’t count). I get it, I really do. I am not judging. I am not looking down my nose at anyone. I am retired and rarely in such a rush that dropping my clothes to the floor and rushing off is necessary. This is not true for young families. In in my younger days I, too, dropped my clothes rather than hang them up. And I think with children’s activities, time is even more crunched today than it was for me. Knowing this, I haven’t felt any urge to say anything to my kids.
But the DNR is inviting us to take a look at our water usage and maybe we all need to inconvenience ourselves a little. The consequences of not doing so may mean some people having their wells run dry. Ponds and lakes drying up could bring disaster to our wildlife. Our farmers need water if they are going to provide food for us.
Changing the way we do laundry is only one way to conserve water. I am curious about what some of you have done. I’d love to hear…I’d love to share your ideas with others.
Oh, I went off on the laundry and didn’t discuss water conservation. We let the grass go brown in the summer and stuff like that. We could do so much more though. I want rain containers to collect water to use for watering plants. We should also put water savers in the showers.
We have a little timer in our shower. I think it is a little short, three minutes, especially for a gal with long hair. My husband has the perfect hair for a short shower, though…none.
We, too, are talking about using a rain barrel. We have an automatic watering system for our garden which is really handy for dry days when we are gone from our home. But we have lots of plantings around our house that could use rain water.
I really try to “bless” my family by keeping a nice home for them. The chores don’t bother me. It’s something to do to make things nice around the house. However, sometimes I wonder if the laundry is going to drive me to drink.
My husband grew up in a home where they only used a towel once. I think you should hang towels up and re-use them 3 or 4 times before going into the wash. You are drying off your clean body! After 15 years he finally will re-use it twice.
I routinely wear most of my clothes at least twice before putting them in the laundry. I have no problem picking them up off the floor and putting them on again! If only family would do the same. Some things like dress shirts, I understand but not jeans that haven’t had anything spilled on them.
I’m not proud of this but I may have had a complete nervous breakdown one day when I found folded up clothes from the last laundry day mixed in with the dirty laundry.
Lots of good ideas. It is good to just pay attention, to question our water usage. As for laundry driving you to drink…not good… I tried that…makes matching socks really hard.
lol