5 Litres a Day - Water Challenge Day 3 and Day 4

Halfway through my 5 litres per day water challenge!


Day three was quite hard as I did not stay at my home on that night, meaning I didn't have access to the resources that I was using.

I didn't have resources such as my bucket to wash my clothes in (or enough time to get them dried before I went back home the next day), or to wash my body with  - so I decided that I would add the 2.5 litres that I would have otherwise used on Wednesday onto Thursday.


Instead of showering on Wednesday, I used a flannel, soap and some of my *very* limited water to clean my body this way. It didn't take up much water and it was a trick I used in India quite a lot when I didn't have time to shower. My hair was okay as I cleaned it on day two. The point of this blog and the challenge was to show exactly how hard it is to live on a very limited amount of water, so although it may seem not very clean at all - even having a flannel and clean water to wash myself down with it is a lot more than thousands of others have.

Using resources available to me

I only had one 1 litre bottle with me which I used for drinking water. As a result of this I had to guess how much water I was using for cooking and hygiene, which wasn't too hard since I had days one and two to judge by. Although I was using water from the tap instead of from my bottles, I was more conscious of how much water was running through the tap because of living out of bottles and having very little water to use.

I relied on using hand sanitiser a lot on day three so that I wouldn't use more water than my limit.


Day four, despite the added 2.5 litres from day three on top of my 5 litres, was actually the hardest day that I endured. This was because I had two lots of clothes to hand wash, and my hair and body to wash. I completely messed up the pattern that I created for myself to be able to *comfortably* live on 5 litres of water per day.

 Washing my body and hair with 3 litres of water wasn't incredibly hard as I had done both separately with 1.5 litres on day one and day two. Due to volunteering in India, and showering out of a bucket for three months, I have gotten quite used to washing myself using only the amount of water that is needed and not more.

hand washing clothes

The most challenging part of day four was washing two days worth of clothes with only 2 litres of water. This was hard, firstly because of the type of clothes I wore which were the type of material which hold a lot of water, and because there was more items to wash.

I used 1 litre to cover the clothes and make sure that they were wet, and then I put in the detergent and let the clothes sit for about 15 minutes. I then used the method that I learned in India to make sure that all the dirt was coming out of my clothes. I then used the other litre to wash the soap out of each piece of clothing separately. Using two litres of water to wash my clothes was incredibly difficult as I was used to using about 10 - 12 litres in India to do the same job. I used some of my "hygiene" water to finish washing my clothes.

The same as with washing my hair, my body, even my dishes - using too much product (in this case detergent) to wash items with will mean that you have to use more water to wash the product out, so I had to be really careful not to use too much detergent to wash my clothes with.

The amount of water I had for drinking and cooking was the same as previous days - enough to get by comfortably.

Here are some tips that I learned on day three and day four:


- If you ever decide to start hand washing clothes, make sure that you wash your clothes everyday so that your clothes do not build up and so that you don't use more water than needed.

- Use a flannel and soap if you don't have time for a shower or if you're not "dirty enough" to have a shower - and remember to have short 5 minute showers to save water!