I have to admit that I love my kiddie pool. It’s a great way to allow the kids to cool off in the hot weather we get here without turning on the air conditioner.

We have a fairly large kiddie pool. It’s one of the ones that inflates through three rings, and the water gets a foot and a half to two feet deep, and about six feet in diameter. Part of our backyard is wood chips that the landlords put in. I destest these, as they’re the wrong sort for walking on, and give splinters like mad, but it means we can put up the pool on an otherwise useless section of yard.

It’s a lot of fun for the entire family and it has really helped my kids to comfortably advance their swimming skills. My son, at 2-1/2 has gone from clinging when we take him in a big pool, to propelling himself around just a bit.

Some of that’s scary, since he thinks he can do more than he can. But we’re aiming for twice a week at a big pool so that he learns quickly.

It’s helped my daughter improve too. She’s 5 and it’s just deep enough that she can practice her swimming. In a big pool she seems to now be inventing her own sort of breaststroke. Given that we weren’t able to sign her up for swimming lessons this year, I’m pretty impressed.

But I do always feel a little bit bad about kiddie pools. They aren’t the most environmentally sensitive thing to have. But I do what I can.

First is of course to know where the patch kit is, so that the thing lasts as long as possible. Finding a leak in one of these is a real bear, since it’s so big. But when it happens I want to be able to give it a try.

But we also think about what we do with the water in it. We don’t put in any chemicals, and so the water goes bad in a fairly short time. But it is good for watering, so by my count the water is getting used twice. Given that we have very hard water in my area, I understand that it’s even better for the plants to have water that has been sitting for a few days, not to mention whatever the wind blows in or *ahem* the kids include, athough we’ve worked hard on that particular rule.

While I don’t like what the pool is made of, I think we don’t do too badly with it on some levels. It’s probably saving us a nice bit of air conditioner usage (a near necessity in 95+ degree weather) and the water is reused. I think we could do worse.

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