Green Hair Care, Part 1: Cleansing and Conditioning ("No-poo")

Here's what happens when you use conventional shampoo: you completely strip all of your scalp's oils from your scalp and your hair, leaving them dry, then try to replicate their effects using conditioner. Most conditioners contain silicones, which make your hair shiny, but which can only be removed from the hair with conventional shampoo. The end result is that you damage your hair with an overly-harsh detergent, then mask the damage with a coating that can only be washed out with more overly-harsh detergent. It's a nasty cycle, and one which shampoo/conditioner producers would very much like you to perpetuate.

As I said in my post on facial oils, if you aren't completely stripping your hair and scalp of all of its natural oils, it won't feel the need to overproduce them and become greasy by the next day. Don't worry, there's an incredibly easy, cheap solution to this problem, which I know you are waiting for on the very edge of your seat!

The first thing you have to do is get past the notion that you need lots of foam and lather to be clean. Just toss that right out the window and don't look back. I mentioned sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in my last post as being a Bad Thing. It is, as I just learned on Wikipedia, an amphiphile; this means it has a molecular structure that makes it attracted to both water and fats/oils, which explains why it pulls all the moisture out of your hair. I just thought that was neat. Basically, it's a foaming agent and a detergent, and as I have mentioned a few times, it's not great for you or your hair.

There are plenty of shampoos that don't contain sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and won't be as harsh, but why spend money on those when you can whip something up at home in less than a minute that costs you next to nothing?

If you're sick of hearing me talk about baking soda and vinegar, you're in luck, because that's exactly where this is headed (I didn't say it was GOOD luck).

To clean your hair, all you need is a little bit of baking soda and water. I do mean a little bit: just mix one tablespoon of baking soda with one cup of water. That's a 1 to 16 ratio, if you're into fractions. What I do is just put a little bit of baking soda in an old, well-rinsed shampoo bottle, fill the rest with water, and then shake it up before use. To use it, all you have to do is pour some on your head (focusing on the roots of the hair), then scrub it in with your fingertips, then rinse out. That's it. Just like regular shampoo, except I focus more on the scrubbing aspect. Despite that, I find that far fewer hairs fall out and end up in the drain than ever before.

Now, since baking soda is a base and it can rough up your hair shafts and even build up over time, it's important to rinse it out with an acidic compound that will neutralize it and smooth the shafts back down. That's why you take another empty, well-rinsed bottle, pour some apple cider vinegar in it, then fill the rest up with water and use that as your conditioner rinse. It seals the hair shafts right up and leaves your hair real shiny. And as long as you're very careful to rinse it all out, no lingering smell of vinegar will remain.

Should you start using this method to clean and condition your hair, you may find that your hair is still greasy at first. As your scalp adjusts to the fact that you're not attacking it with SLS every day, that greasiness will slow way down, and you may find that you don't even need to do the baking soda/vinegar routine every day. Most days, I just scrub my scalp vigorously with my fingers for a few minutes in the shower, then do a little vinegar rinse on the ends. If my hair starts looking weighed down after a few days of this, I'll do a full wash with baking soda and rinse with the diluted vinegar, and I'm right as rain.

Full disclosure, I do still have a couple of bottles of regular conditioner I'm trying to use up. Before I transitioned to baking soda and vinegar, I was using SLS-free shampoos and silicone-free conditioners, and I still have some of the conditioner. On my finger-scrub days, I'll use a tiny amount of the conditioner to smooth on afterward and it leaves a faint, pleasant smell and probably some extra moisture. Nothing wrong with that, and no silicones to build up and need stripping.

Basically, just do what feels right at the time, and don't be afraid to try new things. Eventually you'll stumble upon a routine that works for you... hopefully one that leaves your scalp, hair, and wallet happier than when you started!

For more information, here's an Instructables about how to go no-poo.

Flying time and my "no-poo" adventures

What do you know... I got sick for a few days, then family came into town for Thanksgiving, and now it's the end of November and I don't understand how that happened. I feel like I spent the last week stuck inside a hamster ball. I'm all disoriented and have a bizarre urge to drink from a drippy water bottle.

For all 0 of you reading this, I'm back now, and I think the next topic I'm going to tackle will be hair: a little bit about hair in general, a lot about curly hair in particular.

Here's a few things about my hair routine that will give you an idea of where I'm going with this:

• I almost never use shampoo (once per month, if that, and that's only if I end up using a hair product that can cause buildup).
• I make my own hair gel.
• Diluted baking soda and diluted vinegar are my cleanser and conditioner, respectively.

For an idea of why I have chosen to do such a crazy thing, please see this insanely informative post. For those of you who would prefer to not read through all of that just now, here is a basic rundown:

• Shampoo contains harsh and harmful chemicals such as mineral oil and sodium lauryl/laureth sulfate.
• Shampoo is a detergent which strips your hair of its naturally occurring oils, which help keep your hair healthy.
• You truly do not need shampoo to keep your hair clean, and you can save moderately-sized bucks by going without.

Tomorrow I will begin a two-part series on green hair-care, beginning with cleansing and conditioning. Some of what I cover will apply more to those with curly hair than those without, but I will try to keep everything generally informative for all hair types.

Potential Experiment: Homemade Laundry Detergent

I have been obsessing over DIY laundry detergent the last few days, poring over powder and liquid recipes until my eyes water and using every ounce of my brain power to psychically determine if using these will cause my washing machine to implode. I think it would be fine but I like to make extra sure before I go diving in.

I research things like this at full tilt on my lunch break at work, and as I have yet to develop a system for getting the most useful results back to myself at home (I know, it's so silly that I haven't just started e-mailing myself the links. What the frig is wrong with me?), I tend to forget where I found things. After a bout of rough-and-tumble cursory Googling, here are some links I remember looking at earlier that were helpful:

• Instructables: Homemade Laundry Detergent
• The Simple Dollar: Making Your Own Laundry Detergent: A Detailed Visual Guide - this article not only has plenty of pictures and detailed instructions, but he even does a cost breakdown comparing the DIY detergent to store-bought in terms of cost-per-load.
• Detox Your Home: In the Laundry Room, Part 1 - this isn't a guide to making your own detergent, but rather details some of the ecological and health-related reasons why you might want to consider doing so.
• Planet Green: Make Your Own Laundry Soap
• diy Natural: Jabs Homemade Laundry Detergent - another cost breakdown, plus some helpful comments from readers.

From what I understand, the Fels Naptha soap mentioned in most of these articles is a petroleum-based product, so that's probably something I'll avoid. I think I remember reading that the Zote is as well, but don't quote me on that. Several commenters mentioned using Dr. Bronner's bar soaps instead, which, since they are castile soaps, would eliminate the petroleum issue.

Another common additive is baking soda as part of the soap recipe and white distilled vinegar as a fabric softener. Apparently the vinegar dissolves any soap residue in the clothes, which is part of what makes them stiff without the use of fabric softener. The smell completely disappears once the clothes are dry, and it helps to keep the drains in the washing machine clear of gunk. As for avoiding static cling, Grinning Planet says you can do this by stopping the dryer before clothes are fully dry and allowing them to air-dry the rest of the way. I imagine this would save a bit on the electric bill as well!

Most people seem to find that using a food processor with a grater blade is more efficient than grating by hand. A few people said they use "Salad Shooters" they found at thrift stores. Still other people say they microwave the soap or let it sit out to dry for a long time before grating it because dried-out soap crumbles into a much finer powder.

Our washing machine is an HE model, which, if I understand correctly, needs to use soaps that don't suds up as much. Since everything I've read indicates that DIY laundry soap doesn't suds up at all, it should be a non-issue. I'll do a bit more research before plugging ahead and see what I can find. Hopefully I'll be able to try it soon!