Save Money in the Shower

I was looking through the online Wall Street Journal the other day and found an article called Cut It Out that was also published on Yahoo Finance. It contained some interesting ideas about saving money and one in particular, I decided to put to the test in my own home and encourage you to do the same.

Saving Money While Showering: The Facts

The article made the claim that you could save $102 dollars annually (if you live in Seattle) if you cut your daily shower from 15 to 10 minutes. Further, it stated that a 10 minute shower uses about 25 gallons of water compared to 37.5 gallons for the 15 minute shower. So, that is about 2.5 gallons of water per minute of showering.

Now, I had never actually timed myself in the shower to determine how much time or money I was actually using, so I put on my detective cap and went to work.

Saving Money While Showering: Her Story

Here is how my typical morning goes. I usually get up after the 2nd or 3rd efforts of my alarm clock (I love the snooze button) and go straight to the bathroom. After taking care of some other personal items, I get into the shower and am often out before the next music set on the alarm clock starts. That means I am in and out in less than 9 minutes, since most alarm clock snooze settings default to 9 minutes. Why is that, by the way? I guess we can discuss the 9 Minute Snooze Mystery on another day. Back to the issue at hand, saving money cutting down the shower time. I concluded, personally, that I was probably as lean on shower time as I could be and was doing my part on saving money in the shower. Now, my boyfriend is a completely different story.

Saving Money While Showering: His Story

Here is how his typical morning goes. He gets up after I am out of the shower. After he makes his way to the bathroom, he turns on the shower as to let the water warm up (I do this too so I guess if we were both willing to step into a cold shower, knowing it would warm up eventually, we could save some money right there, but not sure I want to start out my day that way). If he hasn't fallen back asleep while in an upright position waiting for the water to warm up, which takes about 30-45 seconds, he ventures into the actual shower. While I dress, iron if necessary, dry my hair, apply deodorant, and put on my make-up, he might be out of the shower at the end of my routine. I am not sure what he is doing in the shower in the morning because one morning, he started to dry himself off and realized he hadn't washed his hair. When asked what the heck he was doing in there, he replied, "Solving the world's problems takes time, and I do my best thinking in the shower." He has a lot of interesting anecdotes, which I can go into at a later time. Regardless, he is more on the 15-20 minute shower routine. On a side note, he also uses a loofah and body wash, which cracks me up and always knows when we are almost out, while I wouldn't have a clue since I use it less than he does. Wonder how much money we would save if we excluded the body wash from our budget?

Saving Money While Showering: Lessons Learned

Between the two of us, I think we average 12-15 minute showers from my calculations. What about you and your family? We don't have any kids so our experiment only included 2 subjects. However, I did poll a few of my friends about their family's shower lengths. One indicated that her kids take quick showers 2 OR 3 TIMES A DAY! It is kind of humorous when you start examining personal habits in your life. Lesson Learned: Regardless of where you live and how much your water and energy costs, if you cut down on your shower time, you can potentially save money. This was a fun investigation, and I hope yours is just as entertaining.

Happy Showering!