The House We Live In: A Series on Building the Sustainable Home in Tucson, Arizona
We had the first rainy weekend we’ve had in a little while, and having spent last weekend immersed in house plans, I was truly ready for it. Instead of thinking, I’ll be stuck inside, it’s not a nice day for biking or running, I have to dig out my umbrella, there’s going to be muddy paw prints everywhere, I found myself thinking, without the effort of intentional optimism:
This water is for washing dishes and cooking. This water is soaking into the plants. It will wash my clothes. I will drink it, and wash my face with it, and brush my teeth with it. I will pour it into bottles and carbonate it with my SodaStream. I will wash my dogs in the sink with it. It will clean my floors. I will make coffee with it, and freeze it into ice cubes, and use it to make bread. And if it keeps coming down, maybe I will have enough for a bubble bath.
Amy Knight is the fiction editor for Terrain.org. In this weekly series, she chronicles the process of designing and building an eco-friendly house in Tucson, Arizona. The series will explore both how it’s done and what it means, from the perspective of someone who wants to do the right thing but knows almost nothing about sustainable building. Look for new posts every Monday. You can email Amy at amy@terrain.org or leave a comment here. Visit her website, or follow her on twitter @amypknight.
Photo of rain drops courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Amy Knight by Richard Whitmer.
