To some I am living out on the blunt edge of green-ness….to others I resemble the crazy cat lady that lives down the street.  I empty the old water from my KOR bottle on my desk outside the office in the flowerbed.  The KORs that return from journeys to the beach partially consumed get emptied into the potted plants on my front porch.  And I do make my dog drink the melted ice from my son’s KOR after it comes back home in his backpack.  If she could talk, she would be saying, “Really Mom—Really?”

I take serious issue with wasting such a precious resource.  We all heard our mom or dad say, “eat your food, don’t you know there are starving children in Africa?”  For me I say, “don’t you know there are people all over the world that fight a daily battle just to have a few drops of water?’

My husband has taken it even further.  It’s always entertaining to watch new friends and neighbors walk through our back yard, passing by the sealed 55 gallon drums that grace the landscape.  You can just read it on their faces.  “OMG, the Igguldens are whackos storing toxic waste in their backyard.” OR worse yet, “How many bodies are chopped up and stored out here!”  These barrels are actually just rain barrels.  It’s a rarity, but we do occasionally get a rainy winter here in Southern California and  when it does rain we collect it.  We water plants and know that if a catastrophe happens we may even be able to filter it and use the water for drinking or bathing.

So don’t judge a barrel by it’s cover—but feel free to call 911 if you do smell a ghastly odor coming from any of them!

As the photo above show, rain barrels don’t have to look like a toxic waste dump!  Do you collect rain water?  If so I would like to know how long you have successfully stored the water in metal barrels vs. in plastic barrels.