Life in a Drought

Every time I turn on the tap, I'm aware of water going down the drain if I don't have some kind of plastic receptacle to catch it.  For those who don't live in California, this is what living in a drought feels like:  Guilt.

Therefore,  I'm constantly running up and down the stairs and out to the garden with these:

 It takes a full quarter of cold water to get warm water in my bathroom sink.  In the morning, I skip it.

 At least two trips a day to the garden with kitchen water

Is everyone else doing this?  One friend is letting her potted plants die because she's tired of schlepping water.  Someone else I met has a system of catching gray water by using hoses to carry it to a barrel outside the house. 

Jerry's answer to the drought is to shower only once a week at home and the rest of the time at the gym.  That apparently gets him off the hook from catching water in the shower or bathroom sink.  Intermittently, he frets about the state of the succulent garden, and then ignores it and goes back to work.  To be fair, I flush, he doesn't.

I've been wondering about the effect of soapy water on plants, so this morning  I researched the problem online and here's what I found out:

1. The safest use for household "gray water" is to flush toilets.  This is because gray water can contain "food residue and other organic matter" that can attract  rodents or cause illness, and it shouldn't be used it on the edible parts of plants.  Soap is also an issue (see below).

2.  In an "emergency" (we're in one!),  you can use gray water on plants, but there's gray water and then there's gray water.

Clean water collected while you're waiting for hot water can be used safely on plants, no problem.

Gray water with soap is another story.  Plants can be damaged if there's chlorine bleach or boron in the water.  I'm getting around this by not using water that might have traces of Soft Scrub with Bleach.  The washing machine is out of the picture for now, although phosphates in detergent are okay.

3.  Water softeners are another issue.  See link below for more information.

4.  Using wash water on potted plants  isn't a good idea, because they have restricted root zones and get more of a dose of whatever soap/bleach/boron there might be.

Corrections and other tips welcome!

Here's a patch of baby tears I've been nursing along with warm-up water and whatever's left over from cooking vegetables.  Fortunately, this is right outside the kitchen door.

The roots are never supposed to dry out, according to the nursery man. Wunnerful.

No lawn, but look at the rest of it.  We do have drip irrigation, but it's been dialed back.

 There's more information here: http://vric.ucdavis.edu/pdf/fertilization_Householdwastewater.pdf
and here: http://www.graywatergardening.com/Graywater_for_Gardens.html