Rainy days are perfect days to stay at home and stay dry while snuggled comfortably under a blanket with a nice, warm cup of hot chocolate. Better yet, if, while you are relaxing, all that rain can help you save water and lower your energy consumption and therefore the utility bills for your small house. Capturing and reusing rainwater is easy and requires minimal initial investment and set-up.

Capturing rainwater is generally encouraged and often the installation of such a system is even rewarded with tax breaks; however, check your local codes and regulations to ensure that your reuse of rainwater is within the law.

When it rains, the rain travels from your roof into your gutter; from there it is channeled into the down spout until it runs off in an underground municipal maze. So why let all that water go to waste when you could use it for irrigation, washing laundry, flushing the toilet, showering and even drinking?

A very good way to reuse rainwater is for watering your plants for a lush, evergreen rain garden. Install a infiltration basin or swale 10 feet from your house which will receive rainwater form downspouts and percolate from the swale into the groundwater below. Make sure the soil drains well. To conceal the basins you could grow plants that tolerate large quantities of water.

To water houseplants, rain barrels are an excellent option. Barrels made from recycled food-grade plastic or even old wine barrels are ideal and can hold up to 60 gallons of captured rainwater. These barrels should have an intake line, spigot, overflow attachment, screen cover to keep out leaves, and removable solid cover. It is also important to remove the solid cover an hour or two after rainfall has washed pollen and other pollutants off the roof to ensure the rainwater is pure. A more expensive alternative to barrels are cisterns which collect rainwater from the downspouts. When the tanks are full, the water travels through a gravity-fed drip system to irrigate crops.

You can easily reduce the environmental footprint of your small house by finding the right system to capture and reuse rainwater. Carefully consider what your uses will be, how much space you will need and what your budget is. Your garden will always be in full bloom at no extra cost to you.

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