Saving the environment begins at home and what better part of your house to concentrate on than the one that uses up to hundreds of liters of water each day? Between the toilet, wash basin, bathtub and shower, more water is wasted through bathroom activities each day than in any other area of your home, and that’s not to mention heat waste and electrical use. It is also an area of the house prone to limited space, making DIY upgrades an excellent option when it comes to greening up your bathroom.
If converting your home into an environmentalist’s dream is your goal, check out these five hacks for an eco-friendly bathroom:
1. Wine Cork Bath Mat via DIY Gadgets
Let’s face facts: well-used bath mats get nasty quickly and never last long. Before you run out to Bed, Bath and Beyond to purchase your next bath mat, consider this ingenious way to save money, save materials and end up a beautiful and unique adornment for your bathroom floor.
Using about 200 wine corks, depending on the size of mat that you need, a glue gun and a simple plastic liner, only minutes are needed to construct a beautiful wine cork bath mat that looks great, saves money and does its job very well!
2. Homemade Toilet Paper Roll Holder via Practically Functional
Storing extra toilet paper, especially when the demands of a big family require you to have lots of it on hand, can be a royal pain as bathrooms are typically small spaces with limited storage space.
One ingenious and green idea is to use a properly-sized can (old oatmeal cans do the trick quite nicely) to stash your backup toilet paper rolls. Simply clean out the can in question, optionally decorate it for aesthetic appeal, and then watch in wonder as it uses vertical space to save storage room and, most importantly, to be sure that a roll is always just an arm’s reach away!
3. Hanging Storage via DIY Home Sweet Home
Speaking of lack of storage space, here’s an idea that can add ample room to stash your bathroom supplies! Instead of taking up wall space with full-sized towel bars, consider using hooks to hang multiple containers in order to increase the amount of towels, clothes and other necessities that fit into your bathroom without the need to spend cash and create waste using standard furniture. Get creative and use a pail for deodorants and soaps, a soft hanging basket for clothes or a floating shelf for towels – the options are limitless!
4. Natural Toilet Deodorizers via UWS Apartments
The things we do in our bathroom obviously leads the toilet to being the most foul-smelling area of the home but it doesn’t take expensive synthetic chemicals to make it smell great again! Simply combine the power of baking soda, as you likely do in your refrigerator, with white vinegar, pouring it into the toilet bowl and letting it sit for an hour before flushing. An application of this magic potion once per week will help to ease the scent of even the smelliest of your bathroom’s patrons.
5. Make Your Standard Toilet Flush-Friendly
One of the biggest water wasters in the world is the common toilet, with upwards of 15 liters of water being used with each flush of older models. Luckily, upgrading to an expensive low-flow toilet isn’t your only option; a bit of clever bathroom hacking can save money and water quickly and efficiently!
Installing an adjustable flapper on your toilet allows you to dictate exactly how much water flows into the tank and bowl with each flush, saving up to 7 liters per use depending on the setting used. Once installed, tinker with the flapper’s size in order to find a water level that works for your toilet, saving money, water and time in a single, simple installation.