List #21: Things we don't buy

Why use 'sposies when cloth diapers are SO CUTE?

I read this list of Ten Things We Don't Buy or Pay For  on the Frugal Girl blog, which was inspired by this post on Money Saving Mom. I thought I'd try to make my list of ten too & got a little carried away... Heh.

Check out the full list after the jump!

No Poo, The Reveal

Look ma, no poo!

I'm going to stop counting how long it's been since I last used shampoo. I also have forgotten how many weeks it's been since I used baking soda & water solution to clean my hair. When I stopped using that, I had a few days of lanky, somewhat itchy & oily-feeling hair, but massaging my scalp & rinsing really well in the shower took care of it. Makes me wonder if I should have skipped the baking-soda-&-water-routine-for-six-weeks part & just gone cold turkey. In any case, I'm done: my hair has adjusted to not being stripped of its natural oils on a daily basis. It's shiny, happy & feels just like it did when I used shampoo & conditioner. Except for a couple of notable differences: my scalp doesn't get itchy as often & I have very little dandruff now.

Over the years I tried a lot of different anti-dandruff shampoos that had selenium or coal tar or other weird things in them & claimed to solve the flaky problem. Knowing a little more about what those unpronounceable ingredients are & what impact they have on human heath & the environment, I'm a bit worried about my exposure in the past. Not to say that only anti-dandruff shampoos have icky ingredients: 'normal' shampoos have tons too. The David Suzuki Foundation has published a list of chemicals (commonly found in things like shampoo) to avoid here. If you're interested in more details, they also provide a background document with more detail on these nasties than I feel like getting into here.

I encourage you to read the ingredients list on your shampoo & compare it to the 'Dirty Dozen' on Suzuki's website. If that scares you, or the amount of money you're spending on haircare products makes you wince, then think about going no poo!

No Poo Update

It's been over seven weeks now since I last used shampoo. Most of that time, I was washing my hair with baking soda in water about twice a week. I tried to gradually increase the time between washes, while rinsing my hair with just water in between. It seemed like my hair was getting oily just as quickly as it did with shampoo & I was starting to question my commitment to no poo.

So I decided to try a rinse with diluted apple cider vinegar. Not sure that did much. The next day I tried to just massage my scalp & rinse really well in the shower. Then I blowdried my hair & the results were great: shiny, bouncy hair that looked just like it did back in the shampoo days!

After trying it a couple of times, it seems my hair gets shinier when I blow it dry. Letting it air dry is what I usually do, but I might try to fit blowdrying into my routine now...
One thing that's a bit different about my hair with no poo is how I can feel the oil in it. Kind of like how my hair felt on the rare occasions that I used conditioner in the past. It isn't smelly, lanky or greasy--I don't think anyone would see me on the street & say, "That gal ain't washed her hair in ages... ew!"--but I do feel a bit of oil left on my hands when I run them through it. Similar to what I get from rubbing my face. 

I think I'll stick with this no poo thing.

Day 10 of No Poo

So far so good. I have washed my hair with baking soda three times now since I used shampoo a week & a half ago. This is a bit less frequent than the 3-5 times a week that I would normally have used shampoo. It feels & looks the same as always, except less itchy. Possibly less dandruff too. If this turns out to be the solution to the dandruff & mild sebhorreic dermatitis that I've had all my life, I am going to have a fit. I try hard not to think of the creepy carcinogenic oils & shampoos my mother & then I slathered on my scalp from a young age...

Shampoo was very much like a drug addiction: I'd use it, it would get my hair squeaky clean to the point of scalp dryness & then a day or two later, it'd get itchy, which I'd 'cure' by washing with shampoo again. Cue vicious cycle. Theoretically my hair will adapt to the lack of detergent scrubbing it every day or two & produce less oil in the long run, enabling me to use the baking soda less than twice a week.

I would like to streamline the baking soda process a bit. I'm going to the kitchen, using a funnel to get a tablespoon of baking soda into a squirt bottle, which I then fill with water in the shower. Once that's done, it's the same as using commercial shampoo: squirt on head, massage into roots & rinse. Slightly more preparation involved than groggily reaching for the shampoo bottle on the windowsill, though. I suppose, down the road, even if I still need to clean it with baking soda, I'll be saving a fair bit of money in the long run & will not have to worry about parabens, phthalates, sodium lauryl/laureth sulfates, etc, etc, etc.