Culture & Entertainment

A Friday confession

Canadian Living
Culture & Entertainment

A Friday confession

greenblog_shower2.jpg This blog entry is a confession. A typical weekday morning for me is very rushed. I press snooze three to four times before I actually get out of bed and, at that point, I'm already running late. As soon as I step foot on the ground I'm rushing around my house in a sleepy haze to get ready for work. But, as soon as I get in that shower I'm in my happy space. I bask in the warm water and literally have to talk myself into getting out of the shower so I'll make it to work on time. I'm not even going to estimate how long I spend in the shower for fear of embarrassing myself further. I'm conscience of all the valuable resources I'm wasting by being overly thorough when washing my armpits - hey, I'm a highly active gal - I've just never made the effort to do something about it. I'm environmentally conscious in so many other ways, I just thought that I could let one nasty habit slip by. But then I read in True Green that "With every minute you linger under the standard showerhead [you're] using four to six gallons of water. If you're spending more that five minutes you're dawdling. If it's more like 10 minutes, over the course of a year you could be wasting enough water to fill a backyard pool and creating an extra 2,200 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions just from the energy used to heat the water." It's official, I'm ashamed of myself. I've made the decision to announce my little problem so that I'll be forced to make a change. Sitting around with a guilty conscience isn't going to save water, so I'm challenging myself to drastically reduce my shower time. Starting with my next shower I will bring my stop watch into the bathroom and time myself for four minutes. Once my timer beeps I'm turning my shower off, even if I still have suds all over my body. Hey, if Jennifer Aniston can do it, so can I. Wow! It felt really good to make that confession. So good, in fact, that I'm going to invite you to do the same. What's your guilty pleasure? Do you leave a hallway light on because you're still scared of the boogie man? Do you blast the AC in your car? Do you let the water run while you're brushing your teeth? And, most importantly, what are you going to do to change your guilty habit? In case you need some water conservation tips:10 ways to conserve water in your homeHow to conserve water in your kitchen

Comments

Share X
Culture & Entertainment

A Friday confession

Login