There are many ways to save energy and water around the house, but one often-overlooked household item can actually make a big impact when it comes to water conservation. I'm talking about your toilet.

The average household uses 350 gallons of water a day and your toilets use about 25% of that average. That's a lot of water! I just fixed a toilet in our home that was constantly running. I knew letting it continue was like flushing money away, but I had no idea how much water our toilets actually use.

I searched online to figure out how to fix the problem myself and found out we could do more to conserve water. While switching to a high efficiency toilet, or HET, isn't practical at this point, I did find a valve that would help save water with each flush and costs under $12.

Installing the new valve was easy and it was a relief not to hear the toilet running anymore. Now that I know how much water we can save, I'm going to install the new valves on the rest of our toilets. I feel a little smarter for learning how to fix a small household problem that can help make a big impact on the environment!