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Personal Narrative: How my Family Cut Back on Water Usage

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Living in the hot west during the summer usually means droughts and water restrictions. However there are many ways to save water such as placing a bucket under your bathtub faucet to catch the cold water to water plants with, while you wait for the hot water to arrive.  

During a particularly dry summer my family took a unique approach to cut back on our water usage. 

One of the biggest water hogs is most likely the grass surrounding your house. The average 500 square feet of beautiful green grass uses up 64,000 gallons of water per year! That is the size of three swimming pools! 

My mom, who had recently replaced our old shower heads for water-reducing shower heads, (My sister and I got into a bad habit of taking 20 minute showers) decided that the median outside of our house was wasting too much water. 

Being the creative person she is, mom came up with a brilliant way to still keep a nice looking median but to practically remove all water use.

The first step was to rip up the grass and replace it with medium sized pebbles. 

Then she planted Blue Oat Grass which need only a little water to live and also to keep the median from looking too grey. Because the trees planted on our median are home to all sorts of critters she decided to keep the trees.

Although I do not know exactly how many gallons of water we saved (I am assuming a lot because our median is about 300 sq ft) our water bill went down by over $100 a month in the summer months.

There are many ways that you and your family can cut back on water by simply putting on water-reducing shower heads, to landscaping an entire median.

Photo credit:  Madeline D.  Our new Median

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Madeline , 13 , Colorado
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