Conserve water? My feelings had always been, "there is water everywhere, why in the world are many out there wanting us to save or conserve water?" I knew that the Earth was only about 30% land and the rest was water. I'd been on many a cruise over the vast water filled oceans and I also know that when it rains, the water goes into the land, streams and rivers and eventually evaporates back into the clouds only to come back down again. Water certainly wasn't disappearing out of our atmosphere so what was all the fuss?

Those were my thoughts until I covered the topic with one of my children out of one of their children's magazines. Turns out, based on the percentages the Earth is broken up into, it is pretty easy to understand the facts about whether to or not to concern oneself with the issue of water conservation.

To better understand the math percentages with respect to the Earth, take 100 chips and lay them out on the floor in a 10 by 10 grid pattern. Those chips represent 100% of the Earth. Cover up 30 of those chips, those represent the land on earth leaving you all of the water which represents 70 chips or 70% of Earth. Out of those 70 chips, only 3 represent fresh water. Of those 3 fresh water chips, 2 represent the frozen ice caps leaving us with only 1 chip, or 1 percent of the Earth available for fresh water and all of it's living organisms that require it.

Wow, so much for my original misinformed water conservation thoughts. That math sure does make pretty certain as to the need for water conservation. Using less water has a chain reaction effect by using less electricity for treating sewage as well.

My children then asked what they could do to help conserve water. Prior to my water conservation enlightenment, I used to get onto my children for leaving unflushed pee in the toilet. After my water conservation enlightenment and a bit of internet research we adopted the following little catchy jingle to help us do a bit of our part and goes as follows with respect to the toilet, "when it's yellow, let it mellow, and when it's brown, flush it down."