by popular demand...

...the story of how I gave up shampoo, probably forever!

   Going no-shampoo is apparently quite A Thing lately. Like as in all the cool kids are trying it! When I decided to give it a whirl I wasn't thinking "trendy" though so much as "green" and more importantly "cheap." We already make our own laundry detergent, and have even started making our own automatic dishwasher detergent (I'm still tweaking the recipe on that), but in my quest to shrink our household's carbon footprint (and hopefully grow our bank account), one of the very LAST things I considered going dirty-hippie with was hair product. Because, see, here is the thing: I am super-vain about my hair. It's stupid-long, and I love it, and my husband loves it, and I am guilty of spending upward of twenty bucks per bottle on things to wash, condition, and gloss it with, but clearly that had to stop with our finances being what they are.

   So I Googled around, and landed on A Sonoma Garden, and pretty much did exactly what she said. A tablespoon of baking soda to a cup of water, and let it age a bit before using (two weeks seems to be the magic number--I put a batch of baking soda and water in a Mason jar to sit while I finished the shampoo I was using, then rinsed the bottle out and poured my baking soda-water into that) (and once I saw the kind of results I get from this stuff I refilled the Mason jar so I'd have more when I finished what was in the bottle). After I've wet my hair through I shake the bottle vigorously and squeeze a generous amount onto the top of my head, then massage it in really well, using my fingertips to scrub my scalp. Then I rinse, use a TINY bit of conditioner (seriously, the baking soda mixture doesn't strip your hair the way shampoo does so you don't need as much), rinse again, and dry (by which I mean towel-turban that shit up, then use a little glossing cream and a wide-toothed comb and let it air-dry the rest of the way, although if you want to fry your hair with a blowdryer then by all means). That's it, y'all. 

   As to the results...well. Hotter read on here that I was going to give the shampoo-free thing a whirl and tried to dissuade me. "I don't like the smell of dirty hairrrr..." he whined. Hotter is very sensitive to smells. He's like a hormonal pregnant woman, except his belly is from peritoneal dialysis instead of a baby and he has boy-junk. But other than that EXACTLY THE SAME. "Okay honey," I said, "I don't have to give up shampoo."

   And then I did it anyway and just didn't tell him. I think it helped that I kept my mixture in a shampoo bottle (Hotter uses manly shampoo from a different bottle). In any case, I never had a "greasy phase" or anything; the mixture worked like a charm and my hair actually looks BETTER than it did when I was paying through the nose to strip it with toxic chemicals. I finally fessed up a couple of weeks into the experiment after Hotter complimented me on my hair looking especially nice (which? It really really does--it's soft and shiny and has more body than it did before!), and he laughed and said he hadn't noticed anything amiss. WIN!

Figure One: Do not adjust your monitors; I actually *am* that pale. But look how shiny my hair is! Incidentally if you ever want to a) look absolutely douche-tastic and b) reduce yourself to tears over the wrinkled state of your forehead, try taking a picture of your hair without any of the rest of your face in it sometime and have a gander at the outtakes. You see what I put myself through for you people?!?

Comments

[krlr]

Hmmm.... maybe. At this point I'm willing to try anything but can't afford the unicorn tears which might be the only chance I have of taming this mess on my head. Except when I'm complaining about it, I'm mostly ok w/getting older but I didn't know the years would take out my waist AND my previously pretty hair.

[ChaosRu]

My inner chemist says that the reason to leave it sit for two weeks is for the sodium bicarbonate to convert to sodium carbonate (aka washing soda). You can accomplish this more quickly by heating to over 70°C, which allows the extra carbon to escape as carbon dioxide.

From that perspective, sodium carbonate is a really fantastic, cheap detergent. I have not checked, but it might actually be cheaper to use a bit of washing soda directly in the water instead of converting bicarbonate.