Brita Water Pitcher Filter

About a year ago we bought a water pitcher. The only reason we had to buy one was because the water here in DC tastes awful, our three year old GE refrigerator quit making ice cubes and water in spite of our best efforts to fix it, and we don't exclusively like to use bottled water. But along with a water pitcher comes the need to change the filter, which seems to be more frequent than not. We need a lot of filters...for a Keurig one cup and a generic coffee pot, the refrigerator that doesn't work, and for this. Usually we try to order them all together from Amazon. But we ran out of one and didn't need the others, so picked up some replacement filters at the Home Depot. If you mind a little bit of charcoal in your water, the first two pitcher fulls should be dumped, but it's a hassle to stand around and refill these things. What did people do before all of this? I suppose you drank whatever came out of the faucet and lived with it. Not such a bad idea.