7.29.2008

 

Natural beauty follow-up

A few things I cannot live without, just so you'll know that I'm not a total hippie:And yet, I *can* live without shampoo, conditioner, face wash, and commercial deodorant/anti-perspirant. And so could you. Two weeks of my new self-cleaning regimen with natural products has yielded much happiness.

Honey on the face has been going brilliantly. It's not sticky, and in fact, it just kind of dissipates on wet skin. But it cleans without drying, and Jack and I both love it. Plus, smelling honey in the shower each morning makes me want a piece of toast with honey like I used to eat at my grandmother's house, and it does a nice job of cleansing my nose of the vinegar smell lingering in the air (more on that in a minute).

I made deodorant using Anilia's recipe, with a switching out of essential oils based on what I had, and it's wonderful. It's kind of the consistency of shortening with a tiny bit of grit, so it goes on really smooth, and I really don't stink at all. Also, I never realized how little my stick of anti-perspirant was actually doing to control my sweat, because I don't notice a big difference now. After I had started using this stuff last week, Jack told me that he's never used anti-perspirant — I didn't realize this and only knew he bought Old Spice, but he's also freaked out by anti-perspirant. I may whip him up a batch of deodorant, too, and scent it with some drops of cologne or something so that he still smells like my husband.

FYI, I bought vegetable glycerin and shea butter at Whole Foods, but I've found much better prices online since then, so if you're going to go for it, shop around. Also, shop around for essential oils, since there are some great deals out there if you just Google what you're looking for and do a bit of price comparison. I'm going to order several other essential oils (lavender, rosemary, sweet orange, and more tea tree) soon, since I've found unbeatable prices that put Whole Foods' tiny $10 bottles to shame.

The journey toward acceptance of the baking soda/vinegar hair method has been a bit rockier, but I'm now sold on it as well. The general advice for washing one's hair with baking soda is to dissolve a tablespoon of it in a cup of water, dump it over your head, and work it in, waiting a minute and then rinsing. I read babyslime's advice for people with thick hair (which would be me) to instead apply a bit of baking soda to very wet hair, work it in, apply a little more on another section, etc. I did this for a few days, and it seriously took me about ten minutes each time to comb my hair in one direction, put a little soda in there, comb it differently, etc., thoroughly enough to get my entire head. Jack has been applying baking soda directly to his wet hair with great success, but he has short boy hair, and I have A LOT of shoulder-length girl hair. The woman who cuts my hair has been doing it for four years, and she still remarks on how much hair I have *every* time I go see her. Anyway, I was sick last week (we passed around a family cold) and didn't have the energy to spend that much time with my arms up in the air, so I switched back to my regular lathering shampoo and thought I was going to have to label myself as a quitter. After two shampoos, though, my scalp was once again in terribly itchy shape, and I remembered the dissolving-soda-in-water method, so I decided to try it. Well, this is the only way to do it for people with hair like mine. It's infinitely easier. I have an old mouthwash bottle (wide mouth, easy to fill up) that I mix everything in at the start of my shower, then I just pour the baking soda water over different parts of my head, work it in, leave it for a minute, then rinse with the apple cider vinegar rinse I talked about in my other post. The vinegar smell comes out easily, by the way, so don't think that if you do this, you'll walk around smelling like pickles. I wash my hair every other day, just like I used to with regular shampoo, and I use the vinegar rinse about half of those times. My hair is soft and bouncy, my scalp is in good shape, and a box of baking soda costs about 50 cents, so it's pretty nice all around.

We cloth diaper our kid. I bake most of our bread. I chart my fertility by taking my temperature every morning instead of taking the Pill or using some other invasive/expensive method of birth control. And now I stay clean without buying a bunch of overpriced, chemical-laden products. Sometimes the older, greener, or simpler approach really is better.

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Comments:

I made a baking soda, rosemary/lavender tea mix two weeks ago and put it in an old lemonade jug and have just used that for the last couple weeks. That way I don't have to mix it up but every few weeks. It is a little cumbersome and I think when I get back I will dump out an old shampoo bottle and use that so I can squirt it instead.
Yay for homemade!
 
Love it. Haven't mixed my deodorant yet because we are out of town and I ordered my stuff online. I will say be careful with the temperature taking. We have that to thank for Emily being born in April. The temperature lied. Although, I am also very irregular, so it is more my weird cycle to blame.
 
LOL, AB. I have a nice regular 29-day cycle most months, and I also chart the Other Stuff you're supposed to pay attention to and have gotten pretty good at reading my body's signals. We'll see what pregnancy and such has done to my regularity, though!
 
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