My water bill was creeping up every month. $82. Then $89. Then $94. I live alone. I do not have a pool or a lawn sprinkler system. There was no good reason for a single person in a small house to have a $94 water bill.

I spent an afternoon tracking down the leaks and waste. The fixes cost about $25 total. My next bill was $59.

Where My Water Was Going

The Running Toilet (The Silent Bill Killer)

My toilet was running — not loudly, just a faint hiss you could barely hear. A leaky toilet flapper can waste 200 gallons a day. That is $20-30 a month of water you never used.

Fix: Put a few drops of food coloring in the toilet tank. Wait 15 minutes without flushing. If color appears in the bowl, the flapper is leaking. A replacement flapper costs $5 at any hardware store and takes 5 minutes to swap. No tools required — it unhooks by hand.

The Dripping Faucet

One drip per second adds up to about 3,000 gallons a year. My bathroom sink had been dripping for months. I had just gotten used to the sound.

Fix: Usually a worn-out washer or O-ring inside the faucet. Turn off the water under the sink, disassemble the handle, replace the washer ($2 for a variety pack). YouTube has a video for every faucet model.

Free Changes That Made a Difference

• Shorter showers. I was standing there thinking. Now I get in, get clean, get out. A 5-minute shower uses 12-15 gallons. A 10-minute “thinking about my day” shower doubles that.
• Full loads only. Dishwasher and washing machine. Half-loads use the same amount of water.
• Turn off the tap while brushing teeth. Saves about 4 gallons per brush session. Over a year, that is thousands of gallons for two seconds of effort.

$94 to $59. The toilet flapper paid for itself the first day.