If you start to tot it up, it won't take you too long to work out that on an average day many of us use absolutely massive quantities of water. Whether for washing, dishwashing, laundry, gardening or cooking, the amount of water we use can get out of hand pretty quickly. 

As part of our month-long focus on sustainability here at Pocket-lint, though, we're here to help. There are loads of ways that you can easily cut down on water use in your daily life, tips that you can implement yourself and share with people you know to encourage wider uptake of sensible habits. Much like recycling or reduced consumption, this is an area where lots of people making small changes can make a real difference over time. 

Tap and faucet inserts

Hey, we never said that all of our tips would be high-tech - the reality is that many water-saving techniques are far from it. One such measure is to get some water-saving inserts for the taps in your home. These are incredibly easy to install, fitting most commercial faucets, and make an immediate distance by aerating your water flow.

That means you get that nice, bubbly soft feeling that you might know from hotel bathrooms, and the same usability from your faucets, but with the benefit of halving the amount of water that flows each minute, meaning that you're effectively making the faucet twice as efficient. It's a small change that can make a big difference proportionally. 

Keep your rainwater

Depending on where you live, you might, like us UK residents, be subjected to an awful lot of rain each year, especially during the winter. This natural water is generally ignored, siphoned away to make sure you don't think about it.

Except, of course, that you could easily use it without much effort. All it takes is something like a water butt or, if you're feeling even lazier, just an receptacle that can sit and catch rainwater, and you'll have some water for outdoor cleaning or plant care. Once again, it's all about the little differences - every time you water a garden plant with rainwater, you're not taking water from the mains to do it. That can really add up over time. 

Watch for leaks

Another way that many households end up using more water than they even realise is through slow (or fast) leaks in their piping. It's a bit of a nightmare for anyone - the possibility that a pipe somewhere in their home could be leaking away water to not only up their monthly bills but also cause untold damage to that home and their possessions. 

Thankfully, there are some ways to ward off that risk, like Honeywell's Smart Water Leak Detector, a simple sensor that can watch an area for changes in its temperature and humidity to warn you of potentially leaky or frozen pipes. It's like an early warning system to make sure that you're never caught unawares by a piping disaster. With cabling that can detect leaks which you can extend up to 500 feet in length, you could protect a massive area with just one sensor if you need to. 

Equally, if you already have a smart home, some products will slip into your system seamlessly, like Samsung's SmartThings Water Leak Sensor, which can integrate with other SmartThings units really easily to make for wider control over your water. 

Monitor it all!

Of course, you could go a step further and invest in a system that doesn't just watch your water use, but actually helps you to control it, letting you work out your usage patterns and reduce them more deliberately. A system like Resideo's Buoy can effectively become a smart "on/off" tap at the mains for your whole house.

This means that you can control your water remotely, making it useful if a leak springs up while you're not at home, but also lets you see your water consumption and make smarter decisions around it. There are a range of other systems you could go with, too - like Flo by Moen, which bundles together leak detection and water control to give you all of your options in one system, or Phyn Plus with its professional installation and seriously impressive control and monitoring. 

It's all in the behaviour

Of course, while smart home technology can be a huge help when it comes to saving water, those smart decisions we mentioned are still a key factor. Obvious though it may sound, if you want to use less water around your home, some small changes might be in order.

This could mean timing your showers to make sure they don't get too long, or making sure that you don't leave taps running while you brush your teeth or wash up dishes. It's these sorts of minor changes that are most within your power. So get out there and do it!