You know that book Everyone Poops [1]? They ought to make another one to go along with it: Everyone Flushes. Because everyone does, and a looooooot of water gets wasted along the way. While today’s toilets use less water than the bowls of old, that’s no help to many apartment-dwellers and others who are stuck with aged commodes. Today a Grist.org [2] reader asks how to save water when pulling the lever, and advice columnist Umbra Fisk gushes forth solutions [3].

Quick tips: You can save water by adding a device to the tank that will take up space. You could just put a milk jug full of water or pebbles in there, but there are also products with cutesy alliterative names, like Toilet Tummy [4], Toilet Tank Bank [5], and Little Cutesy Wutesy Poopsy Flushy Wushy. (OK, she made that one up.) Syndicated from Grist.org [6].

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Donald Gruener, Grist.org [7]