Until this year, California has been in a severe drought. Watering has been severely limited. So, while I was willing to let what little lawn I still have left go brown, I needed to come up with a system to capture the grey water from my washing machine to keep my roses, iris, and redwood trees alive. This is a post I made on another forum in 2015:
Okay, after several hours of contemplation, measuring, and more research, I decided to follow the KISS plan. The upside is that my laundry room will only look like crap when I’m doing laundry instead of having a plastic flexible pipe running along the wall into the bathroom and out the bathroom window. Although I got the most darling little wall hooks to hold the flexible tubing with . . . 
I just have to find out where our spade drill bits are. Dh used them last and they weren’t put back where they usually go. In the meantime, my elaborate plans ran up a hardware bill of almost $90 in parts. My new plan will cost $25.78 and while not a permanent set up, it sets up and tears down very quickly and will ultimately be more user friendly without making our house look any more redneck than it already does! 
I’m following these plans:’
http://www.instructables.com/id/Simp…ywater-System/
and I’m mostly following the warnings from this site:’
http://oasisdesign.net/greywater/misinfo/
The one exception being is that I will be draining directly onto my backyard grass, which I know is a “no-no” but I have three large redwood trees and I’ve always deep watered them by flooding the lawn. I’ll take the necessary precautions and I’m not overly worried about safety hazards in that area. Most of the water will go into my rose & iris beds and my potted ornamentals. I’ve got to get this done. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do anymore laundry until I finished this project and I’m almost out of clean underwear!
This is my elegant set-up! It ended up leaking when the barrel was full, but not when I filled it partially full for my test run. Since then, I’ve fixed it with a bit of silicon. The hose runs through the garage to the front yard or I run it out the back door to the back yard. Not the least bit elegant but fully functional and I did it all by myself! (I am not a handywoman) I’m thinking that if I really get into this, I can put a diverter valve under the laundry room sink and hook up my hose directly under the sink. But that will take a bit of plumbing know how, which I don’t have!
Update: This system has worked well for me and is still going strong two years later. I have to confess that during exceptionally busy times in my life, I don’t bother with this set-up. But I really like the Oasis laundry soap and use it regularly. I think it important to use bio-compatible soap whether you’re watering your plants or flushing it into the sewer.