I think he alternate title for this post should be “Boy Have We Got A fun Afternoon Planned For You”. If you’ve got older or non-water saving fixtures and don’t plan on changing them any time soon here are three easy-ish but better yet low-cost solutions you can try. That will cut your bathroom water use in half.

I remember while growing up my dad would always tell me to shut the water off while brushing my teeth or while taking a shower. It drove me nuts, It was just so annoying to have to stop what I was doing to turn the faucet off, especially in the shower. It would interrupt the water flow and would take forever to get the water temperature back to where I had it. I have to admit I still don’t do this, that’s why I find these nifty gadgets so helpful.

Here are 3 easy and cheap ways to cut your bathroom water use in no time:

Cut Your Bathroom Water Use: #1 Aerate E’m

Older model faucets benefit most from this since newer model faucets already come with a built-in aerator. Basically what it does is add air to the water coming out of the faucet. This keeps the water pressure up while reducing the amount of water coming out, which is one o the simplest ways to cut your bathroom water use.

This one’s from Home Depot, they have several other models.

To be perfectly honest, we tried adding them to our old faucets a couple of years back and didn’t really like them. I found that the amount of water coming out was so little that it took twice as long to wash my hands. That kinda defeats the purpose. Although, we did keep the one on the kitchen faucet, which works great.

But what’s funny is that now that we changed out our old faucets for new ones. (you can check them out here). I find that the built-in aerator works perfectly fine. Maybe I wasn’t ready for them yet or the technology has improved. I don’t know but it’s still worth a try, they’re under $5 and you could always return them.

Cut Your Bathroom Water Use: #2 Shower Interrupted

My hubby introduced me to this neat little gadget; the shut off valve. It goes between the pipe and the shower head. With a push of a button you can stop the water mid shower without affecting the water temperature.

I love it, I use it several times when I shower which helps cut your bathroom water use by probably 50%. And for just under $5 it’s a bargain.

Please excuse the horrible out of focus photos, but I almost killed myself trying to take them.

Cut Your Bathroom Water Use: #3 No Worries, Flush Away

I just learned about this last one while reading Young House Love last week. John fixes the wobbly john (no pun intended) but most importantly installs a dual flush water saving system on their existing toilet.

Normally I wouldn’t get so excited about fixing a toilet, but I was so happy they posted this. I’m always on the lookout for ways to save money on our utilities and good ways to really cut your bathroom water use. Even though the water bill averages about $25-$35 a month, it would be awesome to lower it even more.

Just so you don’t make the same mistake we did, take a peak under the lid before you go to the store.

If your toilet looks like this:

Then use this kit ($20):

You’ll only have to change one piece (the plunger part) and it’ll look like this:

If your toilet looks like this:

Like ours did.

Then use the Total Toilet Repair Kit ($25):

They give you the option of buying an add-on to the $20 kit but it costs $12 more. It’ll be cheaper just to buy the Total Toilet Repair Kit for $25.

Here are a few highlights of our toilet modifying adventure.

This part was really disgusting. Even though my hubby assured me that this wasn’t toilet water in the tank, It had a dirty milky color and removing it with a rag was gross!

Although the instructions were pretty straight forward, we still got confused on this part. The gray part extends on the bottom not on the top (you’ll know what I mean when you do it).

Here she is fully installed.

Oops, someone didn’t thread the hose correctly back onto the tank.

From this:

To this:

Looks like we bought a brand new toilet. Now all we have to do is finish the bathroom.

I have to say after trying it for a week, it works great. If you look inside the tank when you flush. The water saving option (for number 1) uses half the water as the other option. And by the way, the second option works just fine. And for $25 this is a really great way to cut your bathroom water use in half.