Drinking water is an important part of a healthy lifestyle and life in general. Ya know, hydrate or die. My problem was our tap water doesn’t taste great. It is probably fine, but if it doesn’t taste as good as bottled water I am probably not going to drink it. I say probably fine, I really should just get it tested to make sure as some contaminants, like lead, can be extremely dangerous to everyone in the house. Now that we have a little one that is formula fed we actually need filtered water to make her bottles. Simple enough right, buy bottled water. I just can’t do it. All that plastic. Plus the extra cost all that plastic adds. There had to be a better way. We tried a lot of different things to get filtered water and have finally landed on one that gets us the water without the plastic and for what I think is the lowest price.
*Sidenote: if you want to find out if your tap water is fine you can search here….and get if needed you can get it tested.
What we tried before we finally found the solution that worked for us
Brita
This seemed like it would be the easiest way to get water, but it doesn’t get you enough to make coffee and some of those pitchers can take so long to filter that if your pitcher is empty and you are thirsty you might be out of luck. Plus the need to purchase expensive replacement filters didn’t make this the best option for us.
Water Delivery
We have actually done this twice. Once when we lived in California and then again in Indiana. We liked it both times. I think we actually started getting it because I wanted the handy hot water spicket that would give me hot tea immediately. Turns out I don’t drink that much tea and that the cost of renting the machine and the high cost of the 5-gallon jugs ($5-7 each) didn’t make it the most feasible solution.
Fill your own
What we finally found that works the best is the fill your own. Maybe you have seen the machines at the grocery store. It is just tap water run through a much larger filter than you could accommodate at your house, but basically does what your Brita does just in much larger quantities. I say basically because the store version is actually more advanced and usually has multiple kinds of filters giving you an even cleaner water.
The biggest benefit to this is the price. At $.39 a gallon, I can get a lot of water for not a lot of money. This makes a 5-gallon container $1.95. That will last many people for almost a week. We probably go through 12 gallons every two weeks. That is using it for drinking water, formula prep, coffee-making and some of my cooking. Compare that to a flat of bottled waters and there is no contest on which is a better buy. A 24-pack of 750ml bottles (they usually have the fancy flip tops) at a good price is about $6, but can be more than that. That case of water is 607 ounces which is 4.75 gallons. So by filling your own, you save $4. Plus you are buying less plastic.
We even took it a step further and started to kick out canned sparkling water habit. We got a soda stream and make our own now. We tried a few of the water flavors and not sure we are too impressed with those, but the plain sparkling water has been great. We just make it when we want it from our fancy filtered water. We buy the CO2 cartridge at Target and get a refund for returning the used cartridge which really keeps the price down.
