This guest-post is brought to you by Rinnah.

Water is the essence of life. I’ve read somewhere before that if you stop eating, you’ll likely expire after a while, but if you are deprived of liquid at the same time, you expire much, much quicker. Sounds morbid, right? We don’t think about it much, but we need water just to keep going as our bodies are made up of 60% water.

We are lucky in Malaysia as we don’t really have to think much about our treated water, unlike our neighbors across the Causeway who have to rely on Newater and supply from Johor. But we shouldn’t take it for granted that this state will last forever. We need to leave something behind for our children and their children too. What can you do to conserve water?

Fix your leaky faucets. Sure, the constant drip drip of the water can be irritating, but it’s also dripping precious water away down the drain.

Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. This one really gets my goat. Please don’t let the tap run at full strength while you brush your teeth / lather up your face with soap / shave / etc. Just turn it off, do your stuff and turn it back on again. You can save up to 4 gallons of water a minute.

Fill a small soft drink bottle with water and put it into your toilet water tank. This simple move makes each flush use a little less water and when you consider that each flush can use up to 3 gallons of water per flush multiplied by the number of times you go to the washroom… well, you do the math.

Take quicker showers. Showers generally use less water than baths, and if you take a quicker shower, you’ll potentially save water too. (A cheeky tip I got from a fellow blogger - Save Water! Shower Together. LOL!) But please don’t skimp on the personal hygiene.

Save rainwater in a large container in your garden and use it to water your plants / garden. Be careful not to let it be a breeding ground for Aedes mosquitos though. You can put a few drops of mosquito repellent into the water if you so wish.

Think before you water your garden. I know that plants too need water to survive, but do you really need to water your garden everyday? Especially after a good rain? I see my neighbors out there with long hoses faithfully watering their garden daily for up to an hour each time. My heart aches at the thought of the gallons of water that is pumped away in this daily exercise of theirs.

Same as the above, do you need to wash your car daily? I have neighbors who lovingly wash their cars every single day without fail or ask their maids to do it. As a side note, it also ruins our roads!

If you implement the tips for saving water above, not only will you save water (and the environment in doing so!), you’ll save money on your water bill too. But all of this has to start from you.

Acknowledgements:
Some of the tips nicked from The Simple Dollar and the Water - Use It Wisely site.

Rinnah writes about anything and everything that strikes her fancy over at It’s all about the spin…