Our Life Together

2 Choices are Better than 1.

I understand this is going to sound very weird, but I have always liked the toilets at IKEA.

Let me explain:

Kristi and I are proponents of making choices for our home and lifestyle that are economically and environmentally sound. We think the best and wisest use of our resources is stewarding them through informed decisions. If you’ve read any of our blog posts, you already know this.

So, whenever we go to IKEA and I make a trip to their restroom, I always think about their dual-flush toilet. It’s such a simple idea that I wish was standard on every toilet in America — a different flush for different business. You get to choose whether you need a lot of water, or a little.

Since we’ve already adopted other methods in our house to conserve water (e.g., our rain barrel, using a bucket to save the pre-heated shower water for plants, etc.) getting a dual-flush converter for our toilet was a no-brainer.

It turned out to be an economical solution as well. We were able to score this guy on Amazon for $20, and I got it installed in less than 20 minutes. What’s great is that it’s a cleaner look on the toilet than the standard handle, and we now have the ability to use less water for uses that don’t need to drain the full tank.

The only recommendation I have for people who decide to install one of these devices — do the calibration/testing after actually using the bathroom. It can take a couple flushes to get everything set correctly, so there’s no sense in wasting the water you’re hoping to save.

Also, a neat trick for saving even more water — fill up an empty half-gallon milk jug with water and sit it in your toilet tank (we do this in both our bathrooms). It displaces water, so your tank fills less each time. We’ve been doing that even before the dual-flush conversion, and never noticed any issues.

Now if only my workplace would install toilets like this (or maybe even a flush-less urinal system for the guys).