I got various sizes of buckets for Showers and sinks. I put one small bucket in my personal sink in my bathroom and put large plastic buckets in my shower and the shower bath in the guest bathroom too. I tried to get my daughter involved but she wasn't interested and haven't pushed my wife in this direction either. But, because we live in a 3 bedroom 3 bathroom house I don't really have to interfere with their lives to do this.
The bucket in the shower I made sure I didn't get any soap in from my hair or body. Then the bucket I put in my sink I also made sure if I was going to use soap that I washed in another sink. I was already able to reclaim between 3 to 5 gallons of water the very first day doing this without soap in any of it. So, without putting a bucket under my sink or spilling water or having water overflow from a bucket under my sink I have been successful.
One of the reasons this works is even if you overflowed one of the buckets there are sink drains and bath drains to catch the water. Also, when you wash your hands, your body, your veggies, fruits and other stuff you don't use soap on them so the runoff can water plants and trees outside. All you have to do is to carry the water outside and dump it on the plants you want to save. So this actually is working for me without spilling or wasting water. And yet, I'm only using recycled water to water plants and trees.
Also, you might not want to carry over 1 to 2 gallons of water unless you are really young and strong. So, if you are over 40 or more try carrying the water out at 1 or 2 gallons or 3 at most unless you are a weight lifter or something like that.
Another thing that is helpful is to have a handle on whatever buckets you use. This helps so no water spills because of the way you and the water move when you have a metal handle like 5 gallon plastic buckets often have. So, if you carry by the handle it doesn't usually transfer as much movement to the water to cause spillage. But, you still have to think about what you are doing. And you might not want to be carrying 5 gallon buckets of water down stairs because that might be dangerous. So, if you have to go down stairs be sure to only move less water than about 3 gallons or less while holding the rail to the stairs with the other hand.
So far, for me, this has been very successful in regard to recycling non-soapy water onto plants outside and bushes outside.
One tip in regard to a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a handle in your shower or bath. In many homes it takes some time for hot water to come so you can gather all this cold water from your hot water tap until the hot water comes so you can take a shower. This often is 1 to 3 gallons right there.
However, you might also see people go with In pipe water heating (European Style) instead of using a water heater tank to use less water as the drought progresses. We considered doing this ourselves but after talking with a plumber he said we would likely have to install one system for the kitchen, one system for each bathroom or 4 systems to make this effective because of the size of the house between kitchen and bathrooms so we finally gave the idea up as not being cost effective in regard to the costs of installation and stayed with our single large water heater.
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