"A bit more seriously - a bunch of people are saying they don't use their dishwashers? Dishwashers use less water than hand washing, a lot less. Ours (a middle-line Kenmore, nothing too fancy) is rated about 5-6 gallons per full load. For our family, we probably run it once every two days. I challenge someone to wash *and* rinse a dishwasher sized load of dishes on 6 gallons. You probably don't want to let two days worth of dishes sit around, so you will be running water several times, consider that. Plus, they are sanitized in the dishwasher."
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I'll accept your challenge. We live in a motorhome and boondock (dry camp without hookups) much of the time. I guarantee you that I can wash the equvalent of a dishwasher full of dishes on considerably LESS than five or six gallons......more like ONE gallon or less.
Carefully scrape the dishes of any loose food. Heat about a quart of water in the teakettle (or get one of the gallon jugs sitting outside in the sunshine), pour into the stainless steel mixing bowl that is our dishpan, with a little soap. The water should be quite hot.
Start with the silverware and glasses, then the plates, and finally the pans. Wash each item with the hot, soapy water and a scrubbie and set aside on the counter. (If you are picky about sanitizing, you can add a touch of bleach to the soapy water. We don't, but we know of some who do.)
Empty out the bowl.
Fill a bicycle squeeze bottle with clean water. Hold each item over the stainless steel bowl and dribble rinse water over it until rinsed. Put in dish drainer.....continue until all dishes are rinsed. Retain the rinse water in the bowl, because you are going to use it further.
Total water consumed will probably be about half a gallon total, unless meat was cooked, in which case, you might have spent a gallon because you probably had to use extra hot soapy water for the pans.
Now.....take that quart or so of rinse water that was caught in your stainless steel bowl, and carry it carefully into the bathroom and pour into the container in the bathroom sink to use for flushing the toilet. (When boondocking, turning off the water to the toilet and reusing your grey water to flush saves a LOT of water use). Your reused rinse water is enough to flush the toilet several times. (We don't reuse the soapy wash water because the soap content is too high and will harm the helpful bacteria in the sewage tank. The soap in the rinse water doesn't seem to damage them badly.)
Our water tank holds 100 gallons and we can usually go two weeks camped out in the desert miles from town on that amount of water easily. It will not include laundry, as we take several loads each week to the laundromat (and bring them home wet and hang up on lines from the awning of the motorhome, etc.). It will include a bucket bath daily for two people, each using about a gallon of water. The rest will be used up in drinking and cooking.
I watch people washing dishes when we visit people with houses. You are right on one thing......they probably DO use a lot more than five or six gallons. But that is not necessary, and we have many years of experience in using much less.
Challenge met...... ;-)
LooseChickens ( I DO realize that generally speaking, you are correct......but I couldn't resist the challenge, because I knew I could meet it with our somewhat unconventional lifestyle).
My conservation is based around laziness.
