The Shampoo-Free Experiment

After getting involved in state legislation regarding banning plastic bags and styrofoam take-out containers on the islands, I started looking around and learnin' up on a variety of plastic-related issues. I found a number of blogs and websites and products and articles that all have to do with reducing the plasticized nature of our modern day life.

Some tips are easy and obvious. (use canvas bags for grocery shopping) (and by the way, plastic bags will still come into your home that you can use to scoop up poop and what not-- newspaper bags, bread bags, cereal bags, frozen veggie bags, fresh fruit bags. Dropping plastic grocery bags from your life is not the end-all solution to getting that 300 million ton glob of plastic out of our ocean, but it is a step within a series of steps that I think people should be willing to take.)

Some tips are less easy and less obvious. (making your own toothpaste, soymilk, fruitjuice, canning your own vegetables because modern metal cans have a thin plastic coating on them-- these are all things I don't do, and probably won't do. But if you're into, hey. Bully for you, because that's awesome.)

Some tips are downright absurd. (Stop using shampoo and conditioner.)

Which leads me into my latest reduce-the-plastic-content-in-my-life-somewhat experiment, in which I stop shampooing and conditioning my hair for at least a week, and longer if it turns out well. And I figured that this is the week to do it, because it's spring break, so if it goes badly I won't get the reputation around the department of being Bad Hygiene Girl. Hmm... now that's a supervillian toady name if ever I heard one. Hmmm....

My week is not yet up, but as I'll be going away for the weekend, and will have other things to talk about after I come back, I decided to go ahead with an explanation of my experiment and some preliminary findings.

I read a couple of blogs from women who had tried dropping shampoo and conditioner from their lives, and substituted baking soda rinses and vinegar rinses, respectively. This switch has the potential to be less expensive, and because vinegar can be bought in a glass bottle, it has the potential to reduce household plastic consumption by a pretty good bit.

"My hair looks great!" they said, "Better than ever!"

"It doesn't smell like vinegar!" they said, "Not even a bit!"

"I've streamlined the rinse-making process," they said, "So it's really easy and quick to set up for showertime."

How fantastic, I thought. I'd best give this a go. Except, I didn't have any baking soda on hand. No worries, though. I started out that first day with shampoo and vinegar, and this is what I found:

Recipe: 3parts hot water, 1part vinegar, rosemary for scent.

The rosemary did not affect the scent at all. It just smelled like vinegar (though others swear rosemary works great). I washed my hair as normal, and then poured my vinegar concoction over my hair. It felt like I was just pouring water over my head. My hair did not become smooth or light or tangle free. I thought, well, that's a wash. (sorry) But then, the moment I went to rinse it out of my hair, the moment I stepped back under the showerhead, my hair went smooth and sleek and really felt as though I had conditioned it. And the vinegar smell washed down the drain as well. It was great. Brushing it out after the shower, it was slightly more tangled than normal, but still well within manageable range.

When Michael came home, I asked him to smell my hair. He buried his nose deep in my hair, deliberated with deep breaths, and declared, "It smells like mayonaise." What? "It smells like mayonaise." A lot? "No, not a lot." He said he wouldn't even notice it except that I had requested he put his face inside my hair and go searching for scents. So... not completely smell free as some others have claimed.

The next day, we went shopping and I got some baking soda so I could go all out with this experiment.

Recipe: 1tsp to 1tbsp ish baking soda, 1 cup ish of shower water (mixed in a jar in the shower; leftover rosemary vinergar solution, smelling now even less like rosemary and more like vinegar.

I poured the baking soda solution over my hair and rubbed it in. Obviously, it doesn't suds like shampoo, but still I could feel it rinsing oils and whatnot out of my hair. Then I poured the vinegar solution over, as the day before.

There were no tangles when I brushed my hair out afteward. None. At no other time in my life, when my hair has been longer than quiteshort, have I had no tangles when I brushed out my hair after a shower. But here now, there was no effort to it. The brush went right through. And when my hair dried it was... well, normal. There was no change from it's typical texture, cleanliness, etc. It looked like always.

Three times now I've washed my hair with baking soda, and four times conditioned with vinegar. My hair is just as clean as ever. On the day when I used more baking soda than others, the volume of my hair nearly doubled. Not a huge frizzy mess, just... big. My hair is still curly, still soft. I don't smell like vinegar, although when Michael goes searching for any smell, he still holds there is a faint hint of mayonaise. I'm also trying out different scents than rosemary. Currently I'm using a rinse made with pumpkin spice tea and vinegar. I can get a faint whiff of pumpkin spice every now and again, no vinegar. Next I'm going to try clove. Maybe cinnamon, maybe nutmeg, maybe... who knows?

I'm going to keep with this, I think. Less plastic, less expensive, same hair. And it is quick and easy to do, with actually less scrubbing and rinsing and brushing effort than when I use shampoo and conditioner. I can dig that. I'll update later on if it continues going well, or if it stops going well. But short term results are promising.

NEXT: My next blog entry will almost certainly regard my upcoming trip to the Big Island. On Friday and Saturday I'm going to a site visit for my summer program. I'll get to see where I'll be living and working, meet the folks, poke around, organize some stuff. Very exciting.