I’m a heavy drinker.
Of water.
I am legen… wait for it… dary for requiring copious amounts of water and spilling it frequently. Especially when I’m pregnant. I remember being in the hospital pregnant with the twins in pre-term labor. I was all hopped up on morphine and magnesium but still insisted that I have a full cup of water with a straw on hand at all times.
Then I would fall asleep with it in the crook of my arm until it spilled all over me and my bed. The nurses just adored coming every few hours to change the sheets of a woman incapable of standing on her own two feet or holding her water.
Heh. Pun not intended but definitely true.
About a year ago, Andrew made a purchase that revolutionized the water drinking in our home. He bought a Berkey. He actually made his decision out of a sudden realization that if we were ever to lose power or water for a few days, the odds were very small that someone would take in our family of nine and share their resources with us.
The Berkey is known for being able to filter anything and everything out of water. So if we needed to, we could filter pond or creek water. I shrugged my shoulders and encouraged him to buy what he thought we needed. When he got it all set up, we decided to put it to the test. We put some red food coloring in the top water and waited for it to filter through.
Sure enough, when it reached the bottom of the Berkey, the water was completely clear and tasty.
And that’s the other thing, the Berkey water is DE-LISH. I know it’s hard to imagine water having much taste, but you can actually smell the difference before you even drink it. Hold some tap water up to your nose, inhale the chlorine and fluoride. Hold some Berkey water up to your nose, smell… nothing.
Now take a sip of the tap water. Fine. It’s water. But once you sip the Berkey water, you realize the tap water actually burned your throat a little as it went down while the Berkey water is almost sweet and slips smoothly down your throat.
I know it sounds like I’m being dramatic but I’ve watched Andrew make himself drink water for years. He doesn’t really like it. He’ll sip it slowly and then forget it on the counter. But since we bought the Berkey, he can guzzle an entire glassful in minutes. Often.
The whole family can taste the difference. The kids declared it “yummy” and also enjoy being able to fill their own water bottles. I’ve become a bit of a princess about my water and no longer drink it bottled or from the tap at all. When we go on a trip, the first thing Andrew and I do when we get home is guzzle a tall glass of water from the Berkey and sigh in relief.
And since I’m displaying how spoiled we are, I’ll also tell you that we use Berkey filtered water for our espresso maker and can definitely tell a difference. We don’t need to descale the machine as often if we use good filtered water. This is a plus, since we can’t go three hours without Sweet Precious in operation.
A Berkey was a bit of an investment, but the filters last at least a really long time (think YEARS), and when you add up how much you spend changing out other water filters every three months, it doesn’t seem quite so bad. Plus, it’s nice to know we’ve got a back-up plan for clean water that will work no matter what happens.
For a “heavy drinker” like myself, that’s some good peace of mind.
Do you filter your water? Anybody got a fancy reverse osmosis system? A Brita? An old-fashioned strainer?
