Going Shampoo Free

Some people call it going "poo-less," but that's not a term I can bring myself to use. Why would anyone want to give up shampoo? I'll give you the quick answer. Shampoo strips your hair of its natural oils, causing your body's production of those oils to go into overdrive. Your hair feels greasy (even though you washed it yesterday) so you wash it again, using more shampoo. If you let your hair go "natural," it will eventually stop the excess production, so you won't need to wash it nearly so often- if at all.

My hair is really thick and frizzy, but it gets greasy if I don't wash it every morning. Often, I get a buildup of shampoo and conditioner that makes it feel unclean, even when it's not. I've avoided going without shampoo though, because I'm afraid of the transition period- 2 weeks to 2 months of greasy hair while it gets used to being shampoo-free.

However, there's another option, and that's what I'm trying out. Wash your hair with baking soda, and rinse with apple cider vinegar. Many people say that doing this in lieu of shampoo helped them totally skip or drastically minimize the transition period.

Here's the plan:

• I mixed two tablespoons of baking soda with two cups of water and keep it in a jar in my shower. Use a few tablespoons of this mixture in the shower, rubbing it in to the roots. Rinse.
• Next, make a mixture of 1 part apple cider vinegar to 4 parts water. Pour about a quarter cup of this over your hair. Rinse.

Different people might need to adjust those ratios substantially. I'll let you know what I end up doing. I'm on day 3 of this plan, using the baking soda treatment every other day, and I'll probably add a bit more baking soda and a bit less vinegar. Here's a few blogs that got me started:

• Simple Mom: How to Clean Your Hair Without Shampoo
• Nature Moms: The No Shampoo Alternative
• It's also worth checking this cosmetics database, just to see what's in your daily products.

Would you ever try this? I'll keep you posted about my "transition period," and we'll see if I can stand going shampoo-free!

Avoiding Single Use Plastics

Last week I watched the film "Bag It: Is Your Life Too Plastic," and since then, I've been doing a lot of thinking about all the plastic in my own life.

I won't exhaust you with all of the issues discussed in the film- you can watch it on your own if you're so inclined. Sure, many of us have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and maybe bought reusable grocery bags- remembering to use them is another story, though. Even so, I learned a lot this week about the effect of plastics on our economy, environment, oceans, and health. It's much worse than I had ever considered. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that every piece of plastic ever created is still in existence today, but I hadn't really sat down and thought about it before.

Lent started on Wednesday, and for the next forty days, I'm going to try to give up single-use plastics as much as I can- starting with plastic bags (even those produce bags in the grocery store), and ziploc baggies and containers and seeing what other changes I can realistically make. It's hard to think of an item that DOESN'T come in some kind of plastic wrapper. The amount of plastic in the fridge, in the bathroom cupboard, and yes, in the garbage can, is daunting. But I'm going to do the best I can, and try to think of ways I can sustain this project beyond Lent. This includes some craft and sewing projects, so stay tuned.

Here's some of the resources I've been checking out.

• No Impact Man: the story of a man who tries to eliminate his carbon footprint for a year. There's a book, which I read in a couple days, a blog, and a film, as well as an ongoing project.
• Plastic Free Living Guide: an extensive list of all the ways one woman is almost totally eliminating all plastics from her life. And when I say extensive...I mean it. Whoa.
• Life Without Plastic: Food storage containers made of stainless steel and other healthy and environmentally-conscious materials. More on this in a future post.

What do you think? Are you giving something up for Lent? Any tips about cutting back on plastics? Let me know!