This sounds a bit like navy showers (no wasting of water on shipboard). Also reminds me of visiting my uncle’s farm in Kansas in the 60’s. You did NOT run water while brushing teeth (a lesson learned); you took a dump in the outhouse because the toilet was flushed once a day ONLY. I am guessing they spared me reused bathwater; possibly (even better for a boy) one just didn’t bathe daily.
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You, sir, are keorect! I am so nearsighted (and hated shaving with glasses on), I soon figured out that, hey, Ray Charles could probably shave himself; why can’t I?
Actually I do. But the waste from my main house shower gets routed into a catchment system, the proteins are precipitated with ammonium acetate, and the supernate is used to water the garden and flush the toilets. The floating scum and the precipitate go into the sewer. Bad things happen if the catchment basin doesn’t have enough liquid in it.
And the water used isn’t wasted-- it soothes my arthritic parts.
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Some of us have. I haven’t. I got pissed off at the water district a few years ago and built a Rube Goldberg-esque catchment system. 90% of all the water we use that’s not excreted gets re-used at least once. My household uses less than 50 gallons per person per day, so far under the average that the water district checks occasionally that we’re not stealing any from the fire hydrant out in front of the house. It would be even less but I can’t figure out a way to top off the pool with recycled water.
I just mount my conventional mirror below the showerhead so I can turn the showerhead and direct water at it with my hand as reflector to warm it up to foglessness before shaving.
Shaving with a Whedon brand trickle valve showerhead turned to trickle mode uses less water than the sink.
I tried the mirrors that plumb in to circulate water and found they are toylike and leaky, likely because their patent prevents competition.
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You can shave by touch alone if you’re careful about it. I’ve got a beard, and for several years I kept my cheeks and neck tidy shaving in the shower with no mirror. The result was always nice and even. (And nothing keeps your skin warm, soft, and ■■■■■ throughout your shave like a continuous stream of hot water.)
Has anyone done the math on how much water Californians could save if they all grew giant beards?
~18 million dudes in CA
~17% bearded
~15 million cold chins in CA
~2 gallons per shave
~30 million gallons of shave water
uhhh… Let’s say people shave 4 days a week?
That’s about 6.24 billion gallons of water every year. Exactly the amount used by Oprah. Check my math, I’m usually wrong the first three times.
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I’m sure these graphs exactly mirror water usage. I like the 1970’s sideburn spike.
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We use less than 20 pp with no waste water system (and no pool)
Jesus, why not just call it the ISIS mirror?
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Where do you live and what do you do with the human waste products?
intriguing.
You did NOT run water while brushing teeth
Would you now?
Some odd comments in this thread seem to indicate there are lots of folks that think you can only waste water (and therefore lots and lots of energy) if you live in a drought scenario.
Everybody should avoid wasting water. Everybody should avoid waste full stop, surely?
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Yes, it’s sort of inherent in the word “waste”. It’s like “well, too much is bad for you.”
That was what I was driving at, yes 
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That mirror would probably be in the way for me. I live in what I like to call the “Restaurant Ready” situation, wherein I just turn on the water and let it flow so that if I’m ever in need of a shower then I can just step in, rinse, have a sit for a while, and then run to the grocery store/whatnot. Lets me stay on the move.
I’ve actually got like twelve water heaters in series, takes up 3/4 of the basement, and that does a pretty good job of keeping the flow warm enough. Sometimes I do have to run it through the super-heater which is just a set of pipes under and around my trash fire area. I pretty much burn all my trash out there, and if the water is running, that trash fire will keep everything nice and toasty if a water heater or two are down for maintenance.
I have a better reason to run the hot water all the time.
Without it, the basement reactor would overheat and level the 'hood.
On the second thought, maybe it’d be an urbanistic improvement.
It would be a net loss. You have to water a beard two or three times a day to get a really full one.
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