"No poo" Review

No shampoo, that is. At least not the store-bought kind. Why, you ask? I am trying to get rid of as many chemicals in our lives as possible in order to live more naturally and to improve our health. Your skin is your biggest organ, and it absorbs a lot of stuff into your body. I had heard of people trying to wash without shampoo, and in the end it was better for their hair, but there was this yucky, greasy transition period, and I was not brave enough to do that. Then I heard Melinda, on One Green Generation, say how great her experience had been using baking soda and vinegar. So I thought I would at least give it a shot. Really, I was not very optimistic, but I wanted to see if it really worked. Here's what I did:

First, I tried massaging my scalp with water. That was gross! Greasy and yucky. Then I tried rubbing a baking soda paste on my scalp, that was still pretty gross. Then I tried it also using a vinegar and water rinse. Bingo! Much better! No yucky, greasy transition period, just clean, soft hair. It took a few weeks to get the techinique down, but once I did, I have to say it is MUCH BETTER THAN SHAMPOO AND CONDITIONER! I'm not going back. I have now been using this for almost 3 months. I used shampoo one day (with the vinegar rinse as a conditioner), just to see what would happen, and yuck! My hair felt striped of all it's natural oils(aka softness), and pretty much like straw.

Here are the details of what I do:
*Put baking soda on a small plastic lid and make sure I have my plastic bottle of vinegar rinse(supposed to be 1 part vinegar to 6 parts water, but I never measure, mine might have a little more vinegar than that, in a reused Agave Nectar bottle, the pointed lid is perfect)
*Wet my hair, add a little water to the baking soda to make a thick paste
*Flip my head upside down, and massage baking soda on scalp, this part is important to get it all massaged well onto all places, this part took me a few weeks to figure out how to reach all the places and massage well
*Rinse
*Apply vinegar rinse and wait a minute or so before rinsing that out with water
*Gradually try to wash it less and less frequently, I used to wash it everyday, and now if I wash it Sunday, I don't wash it again until Wednesday or Thursday

Tips:
*Don't get baking soda or vinegar in your eyes, it will sting!
*Give this at least a couple weeks for you to get the hang of it, some people also will have a transition period, but I didn't

My hair was softer, shinier, easier to comb through, and yea, no chemicals! Hope you will give it a try, and I hope you like it as much as I do!

There are other ways to do this too. For more info, check out: http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com/?p=365

Homemade Deodorant

I read the other day from One Green Generation (check it out on my sidebar) that you can use a mix of baking soda and corn starch as a deodorant. I was interested to see if it worked. Some people use straight baking soda and other people find that irritates their skin. She used one part soda to 6 parts starch. I couldn't remember what she made, so I did 1 part soda to 3 parts starch. I have been trying it for about a week now, and I have found it actually works just as well as the store-bought for me. Today I put it on right after shaving and found it irritated my skin a little, but that was the only day it did. Maybe I didn't stir that part well enough. But overall, I was impressed. We will have to see how it works in the summer...