Reducing My Impact: A Year-Long Adventure. Month 3- Reducing Our Water Use

I can't believe it is already July! This month I will be continuing my year long adventure to reduce my impact on our planet. During July, I am going to be focusing on ways to permanently reduce my family's water use. This doesn't mean that we will never use water for pure, simple enjoyment (see photo above), but we will try to reduce our day to day usage as much as possible, and still enjoy an occasional splurge!
We are already fairly mindful of our water use.. I try to take short showers, turn off the faucet while brushing, let the yellow mellow, etc. However, I used to be really good at collecting water while showering or washing dishing and using it to flush the toilet or water plants, and, honestly, I got lazy and stopped. So this is my month to bring back these conservation measures, as well as to add a few new ones.
So here are my plans:

1. Put a plastic bottle in the toilet tank to reduce the amount of water used for each flush.
2. Put a bucket in the shower to collect water. I will use this water to either flush the toilet or to water non-edible plants outside.
3. Put a bucket in the sink to capture water while doing dishes. Use this water to flush the toilet or water non-edibles in the yard.
4. Convince Finn to take a shower instead of a bath. I am going to allow him 2 bath nights per week (as he loves playing in the tub, which has fondly been dubbed "party time" at our house). The other nights that he gets cleaned will be shower nights. I hope this works, as Finn HATES showers, but I am going to try and do some convincing. And bathing only 2 nights a week during the summer is not an option. We get dirty around here. Seriously dirty.
5. Disconnect our backyard downspout and turn it into a water holding tank for duck water. Having ducks uses quite a bit of water. They have a swimming "pond" (actually a horse trough), which has to get changed weekly. We put the water back on our yard, as it is full of nutrients, but it still uses  a lot to fill it back up with fresh water. The ducks also bathe and drink from their water bowl, which also gets filled daily. We likely won't capture much rain this summer, but if we can use the rain during the other seasons to fill the ducks water bowl, we can cut back on a few gallons each day.

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