I meant that as a general comment/advice for people in special circumstances.
The old steel Army helmets served for many uses in the field.
As for dishes,my method is partially fill one sink basin with dishwashing water,scrub the dishes by hand,place in rack, and then rinse off the rackful using the sink sprayer.Probably uses 3 or 4 gallons,tops. Wash greasy dishes last.
I live in the country with a private water system and water conservation has been a lifelong habit.
Public utilities are always setting higher and higher minimum bills.Our electric rates are 6 times the rate of my post-high years AND there is a $20 monthly availability charge before the first watt is used.We use half the electricity as before and still pay 5 or 6 times as much money! Hooking up to the water utility is many thousands of dollars and carries a contractual requirement to NOT use and cisterns,ponds, or other sources of water for any purposes. Now why should I buy chlorinated water for the garden when I have other water?
Watching someone wash dishes with the faucet running a heavy stream right down the drain kind of shocks me;dishwashers and garbage disposals are convenient but one does pay a price .I have neither appliance.
Urban life has a very high minimum cost to my thinking because of high water and sewerage fees,property taxes,utility rates,and so on. Few people in urban areas make use of the rain water (in some places it is not permitted!)even for lawns or gardens(again,food garden may not even be allowed).
All the mandatory and required things demand a rather high minimum income or government “assistance”.
It seems you must run ever faster just to stay in place.
Certainly urban life has its attractions and benefits ;but I’d rather be poor in the country than poor in the city.A wringer washer and a clothesline produce clean fresh-smelling clothes and linens with a fraction of the water but require more labor.
Even better,I’d rather be rich.
No doubt the quasi-independence from the “system” is just one more reason the UN Agenda 21 planners want to crowd everyone but the elite into apartments.
I SO agree! As soon as we can get out of here, we are moving to a place with a well.
We really do conserve water, but the local supervisors got caught up in housing bubble mania and built a multi-million dollar water plant for homes that were never built, so the costs of the new plant are being borne by the existing homeowners. In the last year, our bill went from $50 a month to $200 a month.