A Helpful Hint

/ Marcia Meara

I saw several frantic people today, upset that a local store had run out of bottled water. Why? I don’t get it. Unless your tap water isn’t potable, why do you need bottled water for anything? It costs more per gallon than gas, and is one of the major elements of trash fished out oceans and lakes, or raked up from woods.

I use refillable drinking containers to take water with me when I go out. And when a storm is coming, I fill large, clean containers with all the water we could possibly use. We happen to have two 20-gallon containers with dispensing spouts, which we fill for cooking and drinking. But any clean container will do. Milk jugs, juice bottles, even big soup pots.

For washing and flushing, we fill the CLEANED bathtub, and dip a pail full of water into the sink, or pour into the toilet bowl, and flush. Easy peasy. CHEAP. And no empties thrown all over the place. (Which, of course I wouldn’t do anyway.)

So if your store is out of bottled water (or even it isn’t), don’t worry. Fill up some clean containers and your bathtub, and voila. You are good to go.  Use the money you save to buy some steaks for the grill.  (You can thank me later.) 😀

14 thoughts on “A Helpful Hint”

    • I agree, you have to watch how long you’ve re-used plastic bottles. For my personal use, I have several glasses with screw on lids and straws that I refill all day long for around the house or at my desk, and take in the car with me. I also have several military canteens, but the glasses are easier. Our local stores carry loads of glasses/drinking containers for this sort of personal, day to day use.

      And for a one-time hurricane/emergency use, any clean container that originally held drinks of some kind (milk, juice, etc) is fine. Now our two big 20-gallons are part of our camping equipment, for when we aren’t backpacking into the deep woods. I sit them on the kitchen counter, spouts over the edge, and we can fill glasses from them as needed. Very convenient, and again, soooo cheap!

      I resent the cost of bottled water, and learned a couple of years ago that a HUGE percentage of it actually TAP water from the city where it is bottled. Now isn’t that swell? Paying a huge price per gallon for the water that comes into your kitchen is really crazy. At any rate, I’m not going to do it, and I figured there might be others who never even thought about it. Especially if they are worried about not being able to get the bottled water. Maybe it’s good to know they have another alternative. 🙂

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    • We absolutely can’t. The expose I saw on it was shocking. People think this water is coming from some pure spring somewhere, and 9 out of 10 times, it’s city water!

      Now there are times when you may have no choice, or it might be the BEST choice, especially if your local water supply becomes contaminated. But when preparing for a storm where you might lose water service, it seems silly to me not to go ahead and fill those clean containers with the water you’ve already got coming into your house. It has been the way to do this since LONG before bottled water even existed. Personally, I think people have been sold a bill of goods by the bottling industry, and aren’t thinking this thing through, though I do know that there are some areas where the drinking water isn’t so great. But if your tap water is fine, why not USE it, rather than pay that ridiculous price, and contribute to the ever-growing landfills. That’s my thought, anyway, and certainly nobody made me Boss. 🙂 But I’ll be filling our containers today and freezing bottles of water to use in our coolers.

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        • Than can be a problem. Our tap water is decent, no real chlorine taste. But our refrigerator filters it, so I can fill a glass with cold water that tastes good. I use that for my tea, too, though Mark uses the tap water for his coffee. But for storm purposes, drinking our room temperature tap water is just fine. It’s only for a day or two, if that, since we don’t usually lose water service during these storms. Electricity, yes, but not water, so often. Still, I’m going to fill those containers, in case. If we don’t use them, I water my garden with the water, later. 🙂

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    • Absolutely. It’s astonishing how bad for the environment all those plastic bottles are, even when they go to our ever-growing landfills. And the cost of bottled water–which in many, many cases, is CITY water–is ludicrous. I’m not a fanatic on any issue (well, maybe the Thor vs Loki, thing, 😀 ) but I believe people have been sold a terrible bill of goods on the bottled water idea. That should be the choice of LAST resort, if you ask me. Trapped on a rooftop, no drinkable water available, yeah–please drop me a case of bottled water. But that would be pretty much the only type of situation where I would want it. Or need it. A dire emergency.

      Hmmmmmmmm. I seem to be on a rant, here. Could it be my nerves are shot, since a hurricane is expected to hit us DIRECTLY, now, some time late Sunday/early Monday? Yeah, that might be it. Taking a deep breath, and stepping back from the microphone. 😀

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