Hey, get out of the shower!

Ah, yes. Long hot showers are perhaps my guiltiest pleasure. I know all the reasons to get and out quickly and yet ... it feels so good! Perhaps I need a little prodding.

Enter the ECO Showerdrop, an inexpensive gadget out of England that helps you understand how much water you're wasting and trains you to bathe with more alacrity.

Rather than just measuring the time you spend in the shower (which you could do with a kitchen timer), the ECO Showerdrop calibrates the flow of the water so you know how much water you're using.

You set it up simply by measuring the length of time it takes your shower to fill a one liter container. From then on, you just press the start button when you shower, and you'll eventually get a beeping warning when you hit 35 liters, which, in England anyway, is considered to be an adequate shower.

Low-flower showers will obviously give you more time to enjoy yourself, while inefficient showerheads will yield much shorter showers. The message: replace your shower head if you want to enjoy a longer shower while staying under the 35-liter limit. As for savings, it all depends on how you heat your water, but you're sure to save some money while saving energy, which helps save the environment.

Don Willmott's blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.