You don’t have to stop lazing in the shower, just down always have the water

We’ve been talking showering a lot in my household this month. We’ve just fixed our energy prices for the next 3 years, and with the now eye watering price of getting hot water I decided it was time for some savings, so the stop watch came out and my inner geek was set free.

On a typical day, I found that my girlfriend spent an average of 7 minutes washing, while I managed to get away with a little over 3 and a half. Admittedly my speedy showering is as much due to my love of a lye in and fear of being late for work as a highly thought through money saving plan.

I’ve also taken to timing friends and family who have used the shower at my house over the last few months. My best friend tops the charts consecutively knocking up 13+ minutes, when I asked him what he does in there, his reply “It’s the only place I get time to think”.

Getting clean and getting out in under 4 minutes flat means there’s no time for staring into space, vaguely wondering whether to have fruit or porridge for breakfast, but then again, maybe that’s the point. My girlfriends’ excuse for taking twice as long in the shower focussed largely around her ‘3 minute miracle’ conditioner and leg shaving.

Both fair arguments and this blogger is certainly not advocating hairy legs as a sustainability solution but who said the hot water has to be running? If the UK is really going to start making the kind of savings on Utility bills the Energy Saving Trust is hoping for, perhaps we need to stop thinking about taking a shower as a single event.

“If every household in the UK took just one minute off one shower every day, it would save £215 million in energy bills a year.”

                                – EST “At Home with Water Report, July 2013”

Be honest, how many times when in the shower have you taken a step forward out of the spray, to shampoo your hair, lather up or indeed shave?

Showers have an on/off switch for a reason and more and more inventions are coming into the market to pause your shower or divert the flow for a short period. Maybe the future of water saving in the shower is short spurts? In the end it’s not how long you spend in there that’s important, it’s how much hot water you use in the process.