My sister lives in Manhattan in a high rise. She has never owned a home and has either rented townhouses or condos or apartments with town and city sewage and water.

I live on the shoreline and own my home. I have a well and a septic system.

Whenever my sister comes over, she uses my toilet as a trash can. For instance, she will blow her nose and flush the tissue. She will sharpen her eyeliner and flush it. She flushes clothing hang tags and price tags, wrappers, paper towels, and I even caught her flushing old shoe laces!! She will even throw food in the toilet and flush it. She flushes candy wrappers and other stuff down the toilet as well. I have tried to let her know that this is very inappropriate and unacceptable to use the toilet as a trash can. I told her this is my septic system used for human waste from the body, not a garbage receptacle. It really angers me when she says it is a habit of hers and hard to break. So, when she is here, I put a small trash can next to the toilet. She still flushes everything. She is an adult and it angers me that she cannot respect the mechanics of my home and uses my water and electricity to throw trash out.

She also has a horrible habit of keeping the faucet running when she is not using the water. She argues that the water goes back into the water table so it really is not getting wasted. My argument is that my water pump is running nonstop during those times of water just running down the drain and it is wasting my electricity. And, she does it with the hot water as well, so now my hot water heater is being drained of hot water and my electricity then has to reheat it.

The last time she was here, she woke up early and washed the kitchen floor. I woke up to take a shower and there was NO hot water left in my 40 gallon tank!! Yeah, that is how much water she wasted to clean my kitchen floor, which is just 12′x8′ !!! She is always cleaning and leaving the water running down the drain.

Do you think I am being unreasonable’ She wants to come and live with me for a month and I can handle the extra hundred dollars or more in the electric bill, but should I worry about my septic system constantly being used as a trash receptacle’ Can’t what she is flushing get caught in the pipes or interfere with the workings of the septic system’ this behavior just drives me nuts.
I am not concerned how to handle my sister. I am concerned about my septic system.