When looking how to make our homes more water-efficient a good starting point is to focus on the largest water consumers. According to most, Toilets are the number one, (no pun intended!), water consumer in the typical American household, using 24% of the daily total in fact! Older toilet tanks could hold up to 5 gallons and use 3.5 gallons of water per flush! Modern toilets have smaller tanks that use around 1.6 gallons per flush so they use much less water, but what if you live in an older home and are not quite ready to make the investment of replacing your toilet with a newer one? Well here’s a low cost way to make that big toilet tank a little smaller. No we can’t shrink it, but we can take up some space inside the tank so less water is used to fill it. You may have heard of using a stone, brick or water bag to accomplish this. In our experience, nothing works better than filling a square 1qt plastic water bottle with sand. Why is that? Well, a plastic bottle isn’t as porous which helps prevent algae growth, it’s flexible and forgiving so if it bangs against the tank it’s less likely to cause damage to the porcelain. Sand is heavier than water, making the bottle stay in place unlike the instability of a water-filled bag. See more ways to conserve water and how to create a daily routine of repurposing water using the Shower Water Catcher system by visiting smarterwithwater.com