Your motivation may be to stop the drip, drip, drip that seems to get louder with every bout of insomnia, sending one good night's sleep after another down the drain. But stopping the drops can also provide some much-needed relief to the planet's overstressed water supply. Each droplet that drips out of a leaky faucet equals about 1/3 of a milliliter of water, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

At a drip per second, that amounts to seven gallons per day, or 2,777 gallons per year-roughly equal to one warm, relaxing, sleep-inducing bath each week. Seen through those calculations, you're not so much stopping a leak as you are plugging a dam. (Do the fun calculations yourself at the USGS website.)

To go a little greener: When you fix the drip, install an aerator. These inexpensive little caps, which screw onto the end of the faucet, mix air with the water-reducing the flow but maintaining sufficient pressure. A typical bathroom faucet uses between four and seven gallons per minute (gpm). With an aerator, that can drop to 1.5 gpm or lower-plenty to rinse a toothbrush as you're getting ready for the good night's sleep you'll have, knowing you've made a difference: According to a study by the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF), if every home in the U.S. had aerators on just the bathroom faucets, the country would save 61 billion gallons of water each year. Proof positive that our individual actions are not just a drop in the bucket.

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