How to Adjust to Fall/Spring Mode: Dishes

Let’s suppose that you are considering living in an RV (like me). Let’s suppose that you plan to do the smart thing and begin to live in it in Spring, or rather the warm weather.

That’s great, but sooner or later you too will end up having to Winterize your plumbing. Trust me, this is unavoidable.

While it is possible to keep your plumbing active during winter, you would have to be parked somewhere with an electrical connection. That way you can do a few extra tricks, all of which require a 24/7 AC electrical connection.

So, that means that most likely you will have to kiss your water pipes goodbye until at least the May Long Weekend. 

This means that water conservation starts in earnest now. One of the first ways to conserve water is to re-examine how you wash your dishes.

My solution is to use the largest dish/pot to hold the water, and not the sink. This seriously cuts down on how much water you use, yet still you get your dishes done.

  

So for me, what I do is put some dishsoap into the frying pan that I dirtied, pump some water into the frying pan and heat it up.

This way I not only get hot water (now that I can’t use my hot water tank) but it also helps to heat and soak that frying pan. 

Then I use the scrub-brush to scrub the dishes one at a time, primarily using the water in the frying pan to wet the brush and thereby the dish. 

I typically scrub the dish whilst holding it over the water.

To rinse off the dish I use the water in that (very useful) plastic jug by pouring a bit of water over the dishes into the sink. For cutlery I stack the cutlery in the sink and rinse them all at once.

The washed and rinsed dishes I lay out on the other end of the towel. Once done I dry the dishes off and put them away. 

All in all I guess that I washed my dishes with about 3 litres of water. If pressed, I could use less, for that you use a small bowl and do the same thing.

The next way to really help conserve the water you use is to make it a bit harder to get. For me that is using my water pump on top of my jug.

  

The more water I want out of this thing the more I have to pump. This tends to get me thinking, okay, can I get away with just this amount of water?

Since I have to go find, or as a result of my recent resolution, buy my water, water is at a premium. I still do what needs to be done, but I just don’t waste water, I can’t.

After all, for me, my taps don’t give me as much water as I want just by turning the tap. Right now, they don’t give me any water at all, and won’t until late spring.

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive and keep moving forward.