Water, water, everywhere…

With plenty to drink.

We recently purchased a water softener– aka a whole house filtration system. I can’t remember if I mentioned it or not, with everything that’s been going on, but we had a guy come out and give us a demonstration, showing ‘how hard’ our water is.. which we knew. Yuck. The sinks, toilets, etc. get a red ring around them, the shower is impossible to clean… dishes are spotty, and so on.

Don’t forget the diapers. Man…the diapers. Which we will need to have in full rotation again… oh say 4.5-5 months from now!!! So…what we ended up with was a $$ but awesome whole house system. Because they only want to make the sales pitch once, they offer you a 6 year supply of soap to go along with it if you say yes the first time they come to your house. Now, it’s not name brand, mind you, but if you’re anything like me, you know that name brand is only name brand because it is advertised that way. I’ve bought some really expensive diaper detergents that didn’t do jack for cleaning because our water was hard, and the cheap stuff cleaned perfectly well. Same with other types of soap. On top of that, he ‘threw in’ — now don’t get me wrong, I don’t buy for a second that this is more than a write off for them–an under sink mega filter to make it basically like bottled water. Seriously–tastes like nothing. Pretty cool. It’s not quite ‘reverse osmosis’.. but it is similar. The whole system works by taking all the contaminants out of the water with crystal type ‘strainer’ things. The crystals are cleaned every now and then by potassium, but that is not ‘put into’ your water supply. It doesn’t require salt. Nothing is being ‘added’ to the water, just removed.

You might think: why not just get a ‘regular’ water softener? But, realize that struggling with diaper laundry is no fun–and we never struggled in town with soft water. To have the ease of ‘regular’ wash and wear again is a great thought. That alone is probably worth the price tag. It’s kind of like getting a warranty with a new car versus a car that’s a few years old, you might pay a little more, but it’s worth it, right? Plus, with brand new fixtures and everything, we really need NOT to have to replace those appliances every few years because the elements burn out or get corroded, or whatever. To know that we’re ALWAYS drinking safe water with little kids in the house? Quadruple bonus. Especially since we have one on the way.  We consider good water a HUGE investment. Oh, and it can MOVE with you if you need it to, so you don’t have to re-buy if something happens. Cool.

As far as the soap goes, it’s all pretty basic stuff: Shampoo, hand soap that doubles as body wash or bubble bath, Windex cleaner, ‘orange’ cleaner for general cleaning, bars of soap, dish soap, soap for your dishwasher (gallon jar), and laundry soap. Although, at times, you might want something a little different. For instance, we wanted free and clear laundry soap… and they gave us regular, because they just sent the ‘regular’ pack. Now as to what they will do as far as wanting to exchange the other, or whatever? Is beyond me. They’re supposed to drop ship it. We’ll see. They supposedly have 500 different ‘items’. We were going to buy the system anyway, so why not get the ‘freebies’? All the stuff is concentrated. The guy showed us how much ‘Windex’ was actually in a bottle of Windex, and the rest is water. Trust me, you don’t want to know. Let’s just say you’re paying a lot for mostly water. I get why people use vinegar now instead of paying for cleaner. (Note, vinegar makes me want to barf, that’s why I don’t clean with it currently)…  Matt typically uses dandruff shampoo and I use something that really strips your hair of oils. If the general formula doesn’t work for us, we’ll either ask them to trade, or pass it off to someone else.  So far I’ve used the ‘ap soap’ in Keeley’s water for ‘bubble bath’ — so glad I didn’t go out and purchase any from a bath and body place the other day– and the detergent stuff for the dishwasher. It did great. So far, so good. The salesman that came in said that he got his system 16  years ago. He buys a soap pack (similar to what we got) for $100 a year. I literally can’t even buy my detergent for that. So.. when the 6 years are up (lol), we’ll see if we want to buy a soap pack or go back to buying Tide.. you know?

Overall, it’s interesting. Oh and the company is Rain soft.. if you’re wanting to check it out. Their systems are installed in huge corporations like GE, Ford, Home Depot (which is where we heard of it), and backed by Better Homes and Gardens and other ‘quality assurance’ places. They even installed one for a diaper service in a neighboring state. Sweet, right? So far, the water is good, the soap products I’ve used are just fine. We’ve cycled through our ‘old stuff’ now, so our showers were ‘slick’ this morning. We’ll see how it goes from here on out. Oh and we put it on our home depot card for 0% for a year–if we don’t have it paid off by then– then we’ll just get a small loan and pay that off as we move forward.

One Comment

  1. Hey Jill – we had a demo from them as well, but grew frustrated when the guy wouldn’t even give us a ball park figure w/out setting up another meeting – that really put my Matt off and we ended up forgetting the whole thing for now… If you don’t mind, would you email me and let me know the cost of your system? I KNOW that is a totally tacky question so feel free to ignore!

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