I would like to say that my kids are always wearing jeans without holes, clean socks, and shirts that they first put on this morning. But I can’t. The truth of the matter is that, unless I tell them specifically to put on certain items, the little boys will probably have on holey jeans, some of them will have NOT put on new socks (while others put new ones on several times a day.?.), and Joel will unfailingly have put on whatever shirt he had on the day before (and if I don’t catch it, it’s also the shirt he had on the day before that!). He says that he doesn’t want me to have to do so much laundry.
The little girls are considerably better, but lately have had a penchant for getting in the mud puddles outside the camper.
Lately that this is what my littlest kiddos usually look like…
With all the recent rains, this is about the driest our ‘driveway’ has looked in 2 weeks. The littles are loving it, but are obviously continually in need of a bath. But that is a lot of water, so it’s a good thing that a dip in the lake is as good as a bath, right?
Well, it would be nice, but not quite (at least in this lake!).
Traveling in an RV, often without hookups, just relying on the facilities of your rig, forces one to take note of EVERYTHING that they use and consume. From the amount of garbage that we create to the gallons of water that we use for any and all purposes. And living this ‘lifestyle’ also encourages one to reduce waste and to use only what is needed. When we lived in the house, I enjoyed shopping more, and didn’t care if the girls used twice the amount of shampoo that they needed – I always had a shelf full of more bottles to grab from; now, I don’t have room (or GVW) to store more than an extra bottle, maybe 2. And we certainly don’t want to be using more shampoo than needed because then we would also have to use more water to rinse it out… and we don’t want to use more water than we have too. Not using more water than we have to has nothing to do with ‘saving the earth’, but everything to do with my 110 gal. grey water tank, and our site septic tank…
Even though we have ‘full-hookups’, they really aren’t quite full. Or maybe I should say that sometimes they get too full! We have a 50 amp electrical plug in, we have a fresh water faucet (that provides us will cold, clear well water, and we are tickled to be drinking from the tap again!), and we have a sewer hookup. But we don’t really have a sewer hookup. Because this is government land (I guess), there is no drain field. Our site has a 1000 gal. septic tank that stores all of our black and grey water until a septic pumping guy comes and pumps it out every 2 weeks. (he just came which is what made me think of generously sharing all this with you 😉 We actually can get away with using much less while we are on the road and without any hookups.
Now before you freak and think that is awful that we must have our septic pumped every 2 weeks, and our oversized family is bringing the earth closer to self-ruin, let’s take a closer look at the facts…
Did you know that the average American person uses 80-100 gallons of water per day??? That means that one person would use between 1120 to 1400 gallons of water every 2 weeks. And a family of 4 would use between 4480 and 5600 gallons in the same amount of time! Ya’ll just have somewhere to put it where it doesn’t collect! LOL! Our family of 13 uses under 1000 gallons every 2 weeks (tho I will say that it would be a bit more since we don’t do laundry here…). And yes, we are all clean, but we have found that we have better things to do than take long showers (besides, we have only 10 gal. of hot water), and pretty much take quick or military showers. Those 45 minute showers under endless hot water are a thing of the past – and I don’t miss them a bit; I took a shower at my sister’s the other day – thought I’d take a nice long soaking one in her endless hot water, and got super bored (!) – wasn’t in 10 minutes! LOL!
Oh, and this is absolutely NOT a rant on water usage, or the ‘footprint’ of the ‘gluttonous’ American , or how we are ruining the planet. Just a friendly reminder to be thankful for your public utilities (or drain field). 😉
Yes, we are definitely more conscious of our water usage, and are much more likely to recycle, but…
Only God can (and will!) bring forth the end of earth as we now know it.
In the meantime you still have (might have – depending on His return) 6 days, 13 hours, and 35 minutes to vote for our blog before the contest ends! 😉 😉 😉
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