Let’s talk water, specifically hard and soft water. Yes, our bodies our made of it, we need it to survive, we wash everything with it, we swim in it. But I don’t think I’ve thought about the quality of water as much as I have since moving into this house when we started living with gross hard water. For the past three years, all I’ve been able to think about is when in the hell are we getting soft water?!

I know that seems strange but if you live with hard water and see all the gross spotting it produces on your dishware and the corrosion it causes on the hardware it touches and how hard it is to clean, then you would understand. (Obviously, there are far worse water woes with life threatening consequences than this and I’m not ignorant of that, but this is a blog about making our house a home and interior design, so I’m going to focus on that.)

When we first bought the house, the previous owner had a soft water system that she was renting. Since it didn’t officially come with the house, we decided to have the owner get rid of it before we moved in. Let’s chalk that up to being novice homeowners who still have very little idea of what they’re doing. We should have kept it and here’s why: hard water sucks. Hard water is extremely common in the U.S. but, just in case you aren’t aware, it describes water that has excessive levels of naturally occurring minerals and can even have minerals that give it a reddish color (that, luckily, was not our problem). Hard water resists making soap suds and can be harsh on skin, it leaves stains and mineral buildup, and it shortens the life of household plumbing and water-using appliances. It makes faucets, drains, sinks and tubs hard to clean. We often have had to clean dishes twice just to clean up gross spots left behind from washing. I mean, that’s just stupid. And we couldn’t use the dishwasher since it didn’t clean well with hard water. Instead, we’ve used the dishwasher for 3 1/2 years as a drying rack. Again, stupid.

Our water also doesn’t taste great. We noticed right away that the water wasn’t fun to drink, even when it was filtered through a Brita. We also heard that the water company our town was assigned to didn’t have the best track record and that there were higher amounts of deposits in water coming from that company than others in the area, even if the amounts weren’t so outrageous as to be illegal. This was truly unpleasant to find out.

We got a free water tester from Home Depot and verified that our water was gross. It’s been a few years now so I can’t remember the details, but trust me when I say it was gross. The good news was that the water company was being sued and our town was moving to a different and better one within 12 months of us moving in.

In the meantime, Daniel researched water filtration systems and found a reverse osmosis filtration system that would remove all the icky things and keep most of the good things. He installed it under the sink and, for the past couple of years, our drinking water has come from a separate faucet that delivers filtered, tasty, water. Because we like our water cold, we fill a Brita with that water and leave it in the fridge.

But the water in the house, coming out of every other faucet and pipe, is still hard water. And hard water is still gross. I decided that if we were going to go through a renovation and get a new sink and faucet, I didn’t want them getting ugly and gross from our disgusting water.

Early in the year, I researched soft water companies just in case we wanted to make the switch this year. Based on my research and recommendations from people who live in our area, I talked to representatives from Culligan and a company I’d never heard of, The Jayson Company. Both reps were informative, outlined the same methods and process, and had just about the same cost for a whole house water softening system for 2-4 people. I decided to go with The Jayson Company as they are a longtime NJ-based company that came with many recommendations from people who live in the area. This is not an ad for them or any company or soft water at all, I just wanted to let you know about what we did to help preserve our plumbing and fixtures and hopefully have better overall water.

Water softening systems work by removing certain minerals found in water and replacing these “hard” mineral ions with “soft” ions. The soft ions are added in through a special salt that can be purchased at big box retailers or through the water softening company. This system is placed near the point of entry of water into the home, and the water is bypassed through the water softening system into the pipes that carry water throughout the home. The Jayson Company came and installed it in a few hours and then returned a little later to drop off four bags of salt to get us through the first few months.

We can test that it’s making a difference in our home in a few ways: 1. What does the area around where we use water look like? 2. How is our skin and our hair? 3. How are our dishes? We can’t really answer #1 yet since everything in the house is old and already corroded but we’ll be able to test out how the new bathroom holds up once it’s done. Regarding skin and hair, I definitely notice a difference in my skin and hair, but that could also be due to new skin and haircare regimens I’ve recently undertaken. 3. The dishes are where we could immediately tell a difference. Our dishes are actually clean the first time we wash them and have no spots. And, for the first time since we moved in, we can use our dishwasher to clean our dishes and have them be clean and sparkly. Say whaaaaaaattttttt?!

For the third one alone, it has been worth it.