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Friday 15 April 2011

The 4 minute shower challenge - can you do it?

Recently I listened to Donnachadh McCarthy a leading eco-consultant, he gave a very interesting presentation about how to eco-audit your home and workplace. He also gave me a little 4 minute egg timer saying that if you can keep to this timer in your shower, you'll have used less than a bath of water! It now makes a lot more sense how much water and heat we waste by taking long showers. Thinking that these are actually more environmentally sustainable, but they aren't. We don't have a power shower, thankfully as a 10 minute power shower can use up to 3 baths of water.

Now don't get me wrong, I love to have a long hot shower but I realise that this isn't sustainable. What if everyone in the world decided to take a long hot shower, well we'd be in crisis, well more of a environmental crisis than we already are.

So over the last couple of weeks the egg timer has been in use in our shower at chez OxfordJasmine. Mr OJ takes forever in the shower so I wanted him to a) be quicker b) leave me some hot water and c) reduce our water and gas bills! We see it as a bit of a challenge and have been sharing tips on how to speed up the shower!

At first I went massively over 4 minutes so I have taken these steps

1. Cleanse face and neck separately before or after the shower
2. Stop the shower if I am using a body scrub or loofah to later up and clean myself
3. Not to use deep conditioners that require more than a minute on the scalp. I save those for the bath!
4. If I am not in a hurry or don't have to have a shower in the morning, I have a bath, and then Mr OJ steps in after me (I like my water really hot and he's more temperate so it works out for both of us). I get to relax and read a book, pop on that hair treatment or mask too.

If you're a bill payer and squirm anxiously when the bills arrive then you might be interested to read Donnachadh's book "Easy Eco Auditing", £7.99.

Do you think you can shower in under 4 minutes? What tips could you give?

7 comments:

  1. Lovely post Jasmine! Love the idea of the timer in the shower as that will surely give a reality check. I am quite frightened and do not want to know how much time I actually spend in the shower :S but will give this a try!

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  2. awesome post! i am so anal about conserving water. i have 3 kids and i always teach them about saving water. ;)

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  3. Great post! I think with the state of the environment these days everyone should do every thing possible to save our resources for future generations to enjoy....stop being sooo wasteful.

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  4. I live in Queensland, Australia. Due to serious water shortages over the past few years (ignoring the ridiculous amount of rain and flooding in the last 6 months!), we have been placed on water restrictions. Some households were limited to 90 litres of water per person per day, which is a very, very tight restriction. Every QLD household was sent a little 4 minute egg timer for the shower and told to keep showers to 4 mins max. So, in a nutshell, it's a way of life for us here.

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  5. I've been trying to cut down the time I spend in the shower and saving water so last May I compiled a list of ways to be shower savvy http://thebeautyandthefeast.co.uk/2010/05/26/shower-savvy/(Sorry for link - not trying to spam, feel free to delete but think it's a useful list!)

    It's difficult when you're a beauty blogger or beauty obsessive and want to try out every product under the sun but it's definitely worth weighing up the amount of energy we use in order to maintain our beauty regimes.x

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  6. Here is what I do to get the shower-time down to 4 minutes.

    I use a minute to get my hair damp, switch off the shower and lather up my hair. Wash it off with another minute of shower water. After I squeeze all of the water out, I put some conditioner on my hair, tie it up and then walk around the house in a robe doing everything else - brushing my teeth, checking emails etc!

    Then I use the last two minutes to finish off my body and rinse off the conditioner. Done! :)

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  7. what a great post im going to try this, on me and my little girls, let see if i can get them bathed in 4mins :)

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