For Californians and others dealing with droughts

There are several ways to do this but usually you want to keep the cupboards under your sinks open when you do this (Unless) you pipe the water directly to your plants as the grey water leaves your sink and goes down the drain.

This is mostly for people who have plants they care about or trees that they want to keep a live through this present drought.

1. The first method is to take a 5 gallon bucket and disconnect your drains under your sinks so they lead directly into the bucket.

Note: if you do this you are going to have to leave your cupboards open so you don't overflow across your flow from the drain. So, you need to check how full the bucket is before you wash your hands (or anything else in the sink).

2. The 2nd method is to somehow take a hose and connect it somehow so it doesn't leak to the sink drains in your home and then somehow let the water directly go to the tree, bush, roses or whatever you need to be watered.

NOte: however, you don't want to poison your tree or plants too. So, be careful what kinds of soaps or other things go down the drains that you are going to water trees or plants with during the drought.

So, for example, if you are working with cleaning solvents in the garage on cars or something poisonous you don't want that to go down the drain because it might kill your plant or trees.

However, because of water rationing it is a way to keep the things alive you want to keep alive.

However, I wouldn't recommend doing this for organic gardens that you plan to eat out of because doing this might make you sick when you eat those plants or veggies or fruits.

I have done this with 5 gallon buckets in the past and always someone forgets and let's it overflow (usually one of the kids under 12 in the 1970s and 1980s for me). This can be quite a mess to clean up if there are no adults around at the time. So, act accordingly so you get the results you want.

Later: I was also thinking you could have a holding tank somewhere so you could have a water pump to pump the water to where you want to go eventually. However, remember this is grey water and do you want to be pumping grey water through an electric pump where it my clog it with hair, whiskers from shaving or whatever, unless you let is all settle a while before you pump it.

Also, if you have a multi-story house gravity feed might be better to water your plants if you can arrange it. Because if you are on the bottom floor unless you are drilling holes in the floor under your sinks and running hoses out side vents out from under your house I'm not sure how you would do this.

So, innovation might be useful as long as you don't create more problems than you are solving.