In honor of “Blog Environmental Action Day” (who comes up with this stuff, anyway?) here is a bit of wisdom that was passed down to me by a family friend when I was a kid. We were visiting a lake cabin with a small septic tank, and were advised not to flush the toilet or put any more water down the drains than absolutely necessary, lest we all find ourselves in a stinky, mucky mess. We were given simple instructions on how to do this:

1. If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down. I believe this is self-explanatory. Once, out of habit, I flushed on a yellow, and was met with “I hope that flush was really necessary,” when I came out. I was embarrassed for having forgotten the rule, and said, “Yeah, it was,” which was equally embarrassing to admit.

2. The shower had a push-button faucet, like a public restroom. One push would turn on the shower for maybe 30 seconds. Each person got two pushes worth of water per shower, which worked like this: Push once to moisten body. Lather up. Push to rinse body. Get out of the shower.

I guess if we all used these Cabin Bathroom rules at home, we’d both conserve fresh water and minimize the amount of dirty water going to treatment facilities, which would be a really good thing for the planet.