Much has been written about the importance of drinking lots of water. I’ve heard 64 ounces a day and I’ve heard half your weight in ounces per day. I’ve also heard if you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, the number of ounces can be fewer.

I do not drink 64 ounces of water every day, but I do get close. A lot of that has to do with my morning routine.

I drink some water before I exercise. I get very thirsty after exercise, at which time I eat my breakfast. If I have cereal, I use almond milk, which counts towards my water intake. If I eat yogurt, I drink a big glass of water with it. Then, on the way out the door to work, I grab a water bottle from my fridge.

When the kids were young, we got into the habit of buying cases of water bottles at the supermarket. It was convenient for the kids to grab those on their way to school and on their way to their sports practices and games.

I loved how inexpensive each bottle was. I would stock up when our local supermarket had a sale. At $3.99 for a case of 24, that’s less than 17 cents per bottle. Knowing the same bottles of water at the local deli or convenience store cost $1.00 or more made it seem like a great deal.

Then, over the last few years ago, in an effort to be more friendly to the environment, we stopped buying those 24-packs of water bottles. Instead, we bought a handful of dishwasher-safe, plastic water bottles. We then got into the habit of grabbing a bottle and filling it up on our way out of the house.

At a certain point, my desire to make life easier led to the habit of filling those water bottles immediately upon taking them out of the dishwasher. I keep the filled bottles in the fridge. This way, the water is cold, and grabbing the bottle is just as easy as it was when we grabbed one from the 24-packs we used to buy. Life also became easier because we didn’t have to buy—and haul into our home—those 24-packs.

We are very religious about recycling and when we were buying those disposable water bottles we always recycled them, whether in the bin at our house or at a receptacle at a ball field. But on the spectrum of doing good for the environment: reduce, reuse, recycle—reducing is the best thing we can do for the earth, so by ceasing our use of the disposable bottles we are doing good at the same time we are doing well (it didn’t take long for the reusable bottles to become a much better economic deal.)

My habit of grabbing a reusable bottle of water every day on my way to work has also helped me to drink more water than I otherwise would. I like how this experience hits on three of the Six Simple Rules: be healthy (drinking lots of water), be organized (creating a system that makes it easy to grab those bottles on the way out of the house), and be a leader (reducing the use of disposable plastic bottles.)

How have you taken a leadership role in reducing? What do you do to be more organized? How do you make sure you are drinking enough water? Join the conversation with your comments…

All the best,

David