Don't Procrastinate. It's Expensive.

We got a water bill statement in the mail the other day that made my eyeballs pop out of my head.  It wasn't necessarily the amount that our bill came to, but it was actually the little bar graph that compares your consumption to what it was last year during the same month or two.  I realized that for the last several billing cycles, our consumption has doubled since the year before.  Wha....???

Weird, huh?  I thought so to.  After thinking about it for a moment, I couldn't really pinpoint how we've been using so much water.  Overall we're pretty conservative in our water use.  Especially me.  I'm always super conscious about how much water I'm using while washing dishes, making sure that the dishwasher and washing machine are full before starting them, and even follow the "if it's yellow, let it mellow" rule.  AND, it's not gardening season, so there's no way I'm using extra water outside.

Then my mind went to our bathroom.  Since we moved in, I've occasionally noticed our toilet running.  I didn't give too much thought to it, it would just run for a few seconds here and there.  But now that I was actually putting some thought into it, I realized that perhaps it had been getting worse and running more often recently.  It was just one of those things that I didn't notice because it was a sound I had gotten so used to and just didn't realize it was getting worse.  After 10 minutes of searching the intertubes, I decided it was a leaky flapper in the tank that needed to be replaced.

So off to H-Dizzle we went.  We picked up a new flapper and also decided to get a new aerator for our sink.  The aerator we had was one that dispensed 2 gallons of water per minute and we decided to upgrade to one that dispenses half that much.  The total bill for these things came to $11.

We got home and the installation for both took literally 5 minutes total.

Then we waited.  Two months we waited.  With baited breath.

And today it came.  The bill to decide it all.  See below:

BOOYAH!!!

Let's break this down.  Like the graph states, the dark line is this year, the white line is last year.  This cycle, since our super easy and cheap bathroom modifications, we've cut our usage in half.  Damn.  It's even a little lower than the amount we used last year at this time.  AND, this includes the increased loads of laundry we've done to wash baby stuff to get ready for her arrival in the next month.  (Yeah, one month.  Scary.)

So an $11 fix that took a quick trip to the store and five minutes at home lowered our bill by $22 and cut our usage in half.  We're pretty pumped.

Do you have something that needs to be fixed?  Do it.  It feels so good and will save you money and save the earth a little bit too.