Catching Rain

I think I've mentioned before that my mom is a Master Gardener. She took a class this summer on rain water harvesting, and is now licensed to do it for other people. I'm not sure what all that means, but I do know that she has been hired by several people to do it for their houses. It's pretty cool. There are huge barrels that you install at the corners of your house, and they capture the rain water that comes off your roof. I can't remember the exact equation for determining how much water you can get, but it has something to do with the square footage of your house (roof). Anyways, it's an unbelievable amount of rain...and it's free! My little suburban mom is turning into something of a hippy lately, and she's starting to rub off on me.

So of course, I'm cloth diapering...mostly because I want to be a good steward of God's resources: Earth and money. And we are recycling everything allowable...We use mostly sunlight during the day to light up our house, and I'm line drying most of our clothes...so I thought...let's catch a little rain. Now, I don't have a barrel system yet...but as you can see from the picture we have gotten pretty creative with our containers. The kids love it, and I love that they are learning to be good stewards as well. As soon as the buckets get full we dump them in yellow spots on our grass, or we water the trees, or flower beds, and then we set them back out to collect more free water. And a total bonus...the kids get to play in the rain. As a side note, our lawn is one of the better looking ones on our street.