So we face a major crisis, one with devastating implications for health, safety, public order, the economy (like it isn’t already reeling around punch-drunk). I’m talking about the fact that Cape Town is about to run out of water. And we ALL let this happen on our watch. Yes, the city council is behaving with all the acumen of toddlers on tartrazine, and national government would rather watch a major city go down in flames (literally) than do anything to help, for stomach-churningly self-interested vote-grubbing reasons.

But this is on us, the middle classes. I’ll never forget a Ugandan friend visiting ten years ago. She looked around at the majestic beauty of Cape Town and turned to me in horror: “Where are all your water tanks? Why are there none in the suburbs, where people can afford them? You’re an arid country -- are you people insane?”

I wish it were that pure. Insanity is no one’s fault. Instead we've been selfish, greedy and addicted to magical thinking: I’m OK, so who cares, it’s not my problem, someone else will come along and fix it, and hey, we can always buy water at Woolies. Right?

This blog and its suggestions are for the middle classes. Because WE are the problem. We are the ones who’ve been ignoring the writing on the wall. We’re the ones who install en-suite bathrooms with hot tubs in our homes. WHAT IS THIS THING WHERE EVERY BEDROOM HAS TO HAVE A BATHROOM, DO WE THINK THIS IS FUCKING ICELAND AND THERE’S A GLACIER NEXT DOOR?* (Sorry. Temper. Hot, you know.) We’re the ones who planted lawns and put in pools and garden irrigation systems while paving over earth. We've let greedy developers romp around building luxury estates for which it's been PROVEN there is no adequate water supply. Or worse, where these have threatened vital aquifers needed for growing food (you know, that stuff we believe is made in factories and dropped into supermarkets via elf-sleigh).

We let architects build houses without rainwater harvesting systems (the house I rent is only three years old and half the downpipes are lodged INSIDE THE WALLS and exit only at ankle-height, where it is impossible to effectively catch water). We’re the ones who think we need to shower every day and wash our clothes after wearing them once, who take baths and then pull the plug. We should have been screaming for rebates, subsidies and tax credits for installing water tanks and composting toilets for decades now. We refuse to even THINK about the massive, humungous problem that every single one of us shits,* every single day. INTO POTABLE WATER. We have been guilty of the most spectacular levels of denial.

OK, no more scolding. Things have been tough. Some of us have been working really hard. We’ve gotten our consumption down to 87 litres per person a day, and no wonder we feel bitter about the water-guzzlers who’ve just gone on splashing around like there’s no tomorrow (a cliché that now makes PERFECT SENSE).

(By the way, a little message for the 60% who haven’t bothered to cut their water consumption: I’m assuming that, say, ten per cent of you have no choice: you run a small business from home, you’re nursing your elderly incontinent parents, you have to keep things clean and sanitary. The remaining 50% -- that’s half the city – MAY YOU ROTATE ON A ROASTING SPIKE IN HELL. Oops. More temper. This blog is not for you: you’ve already demonstrated you don’t give a toss, and if there was any justice in the world, it would be only your toilets that clog, and only you queuing for water after Day Zero.)

But. The rest of us, already trying as hard as we can, now have to cut our use to 50 litres a day. And we’re hot and despairing. We’re facing a mini-apocalypse, and we’re scared. We’re getting the message, loud and clear, that we’re on our own, and we need to feel there’s something we can DO. Of course we belong to the water-saving social media groups, but we’re always stumbling across oozing little pustules of racism on those.

What we need now is ideas, encouragement and cheering. We need to rediscover the meaning of neighbourliness, to feel a sense of connection and community. Given our gobsmackingly awful and still painfully recent history, this is not easy. But we’re in this together, and we need to give each other all the boosting we can, as well as sharing resources – including the ones between our ears – wherever we can. We need a Blitz spirit, to keep calm and keeping on keeping on.

So I am going to post, in a series of blogs, every single hint, from the tiny (use leave-in hair conditioner) to the huge (revamp your gutters and connect them to rain tanks), from the costly (install a composting toilet) to the free (pee in a potty and then empty it down the bath plughole or in the garden), from the direct (lick your plates after meals) to the indirect (eat less meat) that will help us, the middle classes, to cut our water consumption to as little as humanly possible. I’m down to 30 litres a day (of which about 10-15 litres is municipal water, the rest harvested) for several months now. This is not meant to be a brag: it’s an indication of what’s possible -- and it’s still more than the 25-litre allotment due to me on Day Zero. So I need to know how to save every drop, too.

Here are the rules for interacting with this blog:

No ranting, no blaming. (Is my blog, so that’s MY prerogative.) Likewise, no conspiracy theories or this-is-God’s-punishment.

Politics: It is no good bitching about the DA and the ANC. Cape Town has been run by both, and both were warned that Cape Town would run out of water in 2016 yonks ago. Neither, IMO, stepped up to the plate. Besides, right now I respect the scum growing in my makeshift tank more than any politician, of any stripe. Stop bickering: you’ve failed us all. And it’s the vulnerable and the indigent who feel your failures most sorely.

Racism: Do you have water piped into your home? A flush toilet? Indoor bathrooms? A pool? A lawn? Then don’t even take a breath to whine about “running standpipes” and “taxi-washing” in the townships. (I’m not going to look up the reference, but a local scientist said that the amount of water filling pools in one square kilometre of Cape Town’s posh suburbs would wash 80 000 taxis.) The poor in this country live at semi Day-Zero level All. The. Time. So until you’ve had to cope with a child stricken by diarrhoea without safe, clean running water in your home, STFU.*

*I really want my posts to be user-friendly and friendly. But I am afraid I swear. A lot. I am going to try and give up my addiction to the f-word. However, I am going to use the word “shit” to describe faeces because the latter is a bummer (ha) to spell.

Which reminds me that water-saving tips are (to use a sideways pun) earthy by definition. We will be discussing shit and blood and other bodily secretions that we usually keep under control with H2O. If you are squeamish about this, congratulations on never having defecated, vomited or menstruated, and convey our greetings to your home planet (and warn them not to follow our planet-trashing example).

Comments are disabled (because racism and politics), but if you like, you can use the contact form to email me your water-saving suggestions, and I’ll publish them. Or tweet them to me @Heckitty. Trolls will get my Medusa face.

Here’s an old link to get us going.

Dear neighbour with a borehole:

I walked past your property the other day. Friends wanted to see round the estate, which is why we were out in the midday sun, in 33-degree heat with the southeaster wind adding edge but no coolness.

You have a borehole. That day, you also had a sprinkler spraying your bright green lawn. The wind was whipping most of the water away into thin air. Your pool was uncovered, and a pipe was pumping in water, which lapped to the brim. No one was swimming; your family and friends were sitting around the lunch table.

Gallons of ink and a megazillion bytes have been spilled or spent whining, howling and protesting at the way the City of Cape Town has handled a three-year drought which has us facing, in two short months, Day Zero: when we’ll open our taps and no water will flow out. Malls and businesses – anywhere that requires flushing toilets to remain operational – will have no choice but to shut down. The economic consequences will be unimaginably dire, the infrastructural damage significant. You and I will have to collect drinking water rations under the oversight of the army.

It’s no good crying over spilled water, but I have one major beef with the CoCT: that they’re quite happy to go on allowing you to toss your precious borehole water all over your lawn. That Level 6 water restrictions STILL permit you to do so, with zero legal consequences. Dear CoCT, what staggering tomfoolery is this? Over the period of a year, I witnessed my former landlords replace five acres of mostly indigenous garden with lawns and orchards on which the sprinklers ran from 10am until 4pm, Monday to Friday. (They still do, according to the gardeners.) And because they have a borehole, you allow this. How could you, CoCT, enable such abysmal stupidity and short-sightedness?

But let’s get back to you, dear neighbour. Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy? Santa Claus? That the water in your borehole will just hold out, magically, forever? That it’s an inexhaustible supply, provided by elves who live underground?

Guess what: a drought affects boreholes too. They are replenished by water from the skies soaking away into the ground. No winter rains for three years in a row means that groundwater is scarce and boreholes are running low everywhere.

Did you study science in primary school? You do know that living a kilometre or two from the sea, if the groundwater is depleted, salt water will seep in and render your borehole utterly unusable for the rest of your lifetime? There are no magical elves to stop this happening. Drain away all the fresh water, and salt water (which you won’t be able to use for your goddamn lawn, much less anything more essential, like boiling for drinking and flushing the toilet) will take its place. For good. Don't believe me? Google “saltwater intrusion” or “groundwater extraction”, and Wikipedia will break the bad news to you.

I concede that I am tired, hot and grumpy. I have been bathing in a bucket and peeing in the garden (including while recovering from major surgery) for 14 months. FOURTEEN MONTHS. My hair is constantly filthy and no amount of deodorant can mask the fact that I’m a bit whiffy. I wear the same stained and crumpled clothes day after day. I have “bucket back” from constantly hauling grey water and harvested rainwater for flushing. So I am in no mood to tolerate your pool and your lawn.

I recently hosted a wedding at my house. To make this possible, another neighbour offered me water from their well point. They have no pool, and their garden, like mine, is mostly dead. They use their water for household needs to take the strain off the municipal supply.

We filled my bath with their well point water, and collected another 50 litres in clean containers. This meant that 45 adults and 15 children had water for flushing. We also used that water for the wedding flowers, and all the cleaning, wiping and washing-up. We boiled it for coffee and tea. My pets are still drinking it.

Dear neighbour, THIS is what you’re going to be needing your borehole water for -- very, very soon. And although I wouldn’t wish this on you, there’s a chance that just when you need that water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, washing and flushing, you won’t have any left. I wonder if you’ll feel your lawn was worth it.

My garden on acid. Uric acid.

The Western Cape is known for its Mediterranean climate -- long dry summers that bleach the grasses, winters of soaking mist and rain until we feel we're growing webs between our toes. But as a small geographical belt across the southern tip of the African continent, the region is particularly vulnerable to climate change. For those too blind, stubborn or stupid to recognise this, the last apocalyptic nine months have been kicking the dust of the obvious in all our eyes: we're still enduring the worst drought in over a century, with the region literally about to run out of water, and no end or solution in sight. To add insult to environmental injury, we've just been battered by a storm that tore up houses and infrastructure, then fanned hellish winds and even more hellish fires now burning the Garden Route. The photos of entire neighbourhoods and forests in flames, of dazed people, rich and poor alike, taking refuge on beaches, suggest Armageddon.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth is epic: successive political administrations of the city of Cape Town have focused on short-term vote-gathering rather than long-term solutions to a crisis they refused to acknowledge was coming. Blame is being hurled in all directions. The government, the filthy rich, big business, global capitalism, climate-change denialists -- no one is looking very good right now.

But the group of people most likely to have an impact, and who are most needed to change their habits, are the middle classes. That's us, with our internet connections, we who take flush toilets, indoor showers and plunge pools for granted, instead of seeing these as extraordinary luxuries.

My early childhood was spent on a farm in the Little Karoo, and I can't remember a time when water wasn't a precious resource, with bathwater shared and then siphoned onto the garden. And it bothers the HELL out of me, and always has, that because our sanitation system is inherited from a damp little island with water endlessly leaking from grey skies, we dump our bodily wastes in drinking water. I am not going to tackle the disposal of what my papa daintily refers to as "boluses" here, although for now, grey water does the trick, and I research self-composting toilets with deep fascination. Topic for another day.

But this malarkey of peeing in potable water HAS to stop. It's one of the most insane and wasteful things we do, and I have become a wee (oh ha ha) bit obsessive about it. The other truth is that I am simply not a fan of the "if it's yellow, let it mellow" policy. It gets niffy, especially if you have teenage boys in the house, and it means you have to clean the loo more often. (But if this is your preferred method, carry right on. The suggestions here are for those looking for alternatives.)

First off, urine doesn't pose health risks the same way that blood or faeces do. Google will tell you it's actually sterile, and while technically a waste product, it's full of nutrients that plants just LOVE. So your first option is to pee on the lawn (if you still have one, which you shouldn't). Depending on space and privacy concerns (remember, I am writing this for the middle classes, not those who live in crowded conditions in tenements or on a hanky-sized bit of sand), those with penises can piss directly onto/into compost heaps (and yes, you should have one of those too). Those obliged to squat can also wee in the garden, but this can be tricky if you're wearing tight jeans, and fine motor co-ords are needed to to avoid sprinkling your shoes. Fear not! Get a container specifically for urine collection (mark it so it doesn't get used for anything else) and keep it in the toilet. (Those oval P&P yoghurt containers are the perfect shape for settling between feminine thighs.) I used to be fussy about diluting wee with H2O in correct proportions before using it as fertilizer, but long since stopped bothering, especially as the gasping garden is by now grateful for ANYTHING liquid. 

But some are just not adept at wee collection, you live eight storeys up, or your garden is a Zen square of raked gravel, what's to do? If you have a regular bathroom, chances are you have two outlets for (almost) water-free urine disposal: the bath plughole and the shower drain. I was taught this trick by an adored elderly cat who hated litter boxes and going out on cold nights. A quick splash of water afterwards (far, far less than you'd use for even one of those little toilet flushes) and all is well.

Oh, stop fussing. It's NOT disgusting, any more than having the rest of your sweat and grime and skin cells in liquid form going down that same outlet. (But I draw the line at using the handbasin this way. That is genuinely EEEUUUW. And never ever ever the kitchen sink. *faints*)

It's a mind-shift thing: the most sensible time and place to pee is at the start of a shower, when everything will get flushed by the water anyway. Yes, this applies even at the gym, I don't care how much you are howling by now. Urine is considerably less icky than the fungi many of us carry on our feet, and over in the women's changerooms, no one is yelling "Unclean!" at those who are menstruating (and neither should they). Just make sure that everything is spotless by the time you've finished abluting, and splash the disinfectant they supply around afterwards. Wear slip-slops if you're bothered by the idea of any communal body fluids that might be lurking. 

Returning to plugholes, those with flesh hosepipes have the advantage of being able to stand and aim (IN THEORY, at least). But not being possessed of said useful hosepipe, I don't want to have to squat in the shower every time I pee, and dangling over the edge of the bath does seem both precarious and a bit gross. I'm lucky to have the most glorious solution: a bidet. And this is something everybody who builds a middle-class bathroom from now on should include (instead of the inexplicable parade of "spa baths" I saw when recently house-hunting). There are very good reasons there is a bidet in every bourgeois bathroom in the southern Mediterranean -- hot-weather countries in which men aren't often circumcised. They do a brilliant job as water-saving bath substitutes AND are an utter boon for the elderly, invalids, those having their period, before and after sex. (Also: soaking sore feet.) It was in India that I realised that the point of running water in a lavatory was to wash the body rather than the porcelain. Then I met my first bidet, and it was an AHA moment.

A bidet allows you to pee in relative physical comfort, and then use a trickle of water both to refresh your bits and wash out the "basin". It's the feminine equivalent of a urinal, with benefits. To keep the bidet itself squeaky-clean, pour in a cup or two of boiling water every other day, with a bit of bicarb or a teeny splash of disinfectant if you're really fastidious.

Those with ladybits might by now be wondering what to do about paper (this also goes for those who've picked the yoghurt container). Well, there are several options: a wastebin next to the bidet; using unbleached (green) loo-paper and composting it; burning it, if practical; or dispensing with paper entirely. Provide a small towel for each bidet-user, wash regularly, and make it a hanging offence to use someone else's towel.

(On the subject of paper, free random ladybit advice for al fresco peeing while hiking: a panty liner means you don't have to carry tissues. Piddle, a quick shimmy, pull up your broeks, and you're good to go. You're welcome.)

I don't know why bidets aren't more popular, especially as they enable one to wash "bits, pits and feet" with only a fraction of the water needed for either bathing or showering -- a Rolls Royce version of the bucket bath (which, let's not forget, is how most citizens of this country wash themselves). But for me, their greatest benefit is that they offer a private, comfortable, hygienic, odourless alternative to peeing in potable water. Yes, you'll use a little bit of water every time, but it doesn't begin to compare with a toilet flush.