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So, to continue: Shampoo bars are the latest thing I have tried.  I thought, hey this is great, I can travel with them much easier than with liquid.  So convenient!  First, I tried J.R. Liggett’s shampoo bars which have been around for many, many years.

Original style but there are several types: Jojoba, tea tree, peppermint, argan oil etc

I got the variety travel pack and used the peppermint one, as I greatly enjoy Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Liquid Castile soap for a million things, including handwashing, laundry, house cleaning etc.  However, the next day, I broke out so bad my entire face looked very much like it did on my 15th birthday.  Not cool.  So I tossed those.  Next, I heard about a company that has literally changed the entire way I take care of myself beauty-wise.

Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Company

This little family owned business in Ohio has literally changed my life.  They sell 100% all natural soaps, shampoo bars, salves, body butters, oils, candles, deodorants and more.  All the ingredients that Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Company uses are the finest organic ingredients, locally sourced wherever possible.  They sell sample sizes of many things, including all soaps and shampoo bars so trying out all of them can be extremely fun.  I placed an order and tried out a few different shampoo bars.  So far, my hair’s favorites have been Herb Garden, Mud and Clay and Soapnuts and Lavender.  I have an order in now for more clay based bars since my hair seems to really like dirt for some reason (figures)  My last order, I mentioned in their order comments section how much I loved their products and they sent me samples of a new clay-based deodorant that smells amazing and a lip balm, 2 things I was already wanting to try.  Their shipping is cheap and everything comes packed in environmentally friendly packaging.  They also have gift packs, men’s accessories and even outdoor/camping soap and bug repelling oils.  My experience with shampoo bars has mostly been positive.  The only negative, for me at least, is that I have the worst hard water on the planet, so it’s very difficult to get a clean rinse of the shampoo bars.  I require an extra step: back to the apple cider vinegar that I hate ugh.  I’ve tried lemon juice as a substitute for the ACV and that has worked reasonably well (although I think the ACV does a better job) so I’m doing that at the moment.

One thing I still haven’t tried is the aloe and coconut milk DIY solution that I have seen on the interwebs.  I did try a coconut milk shampoo bar that seemed to dry out my hair horribly though, so I doubt I’ll try that anytime soon.  Always in search of new solutions but sometimes, I’ll admit I miss the convenience of regular old shampoo and conditioner..although not enough to go back to my hair falling out and being a frizzy afro   If any of you have any no-poo solutions that you particularly love or hate, drop them in the comments (no links or you may end up in spamville) and we can carry on the discussion.

Almost forgot to mention: one of the soaps I tried that seems to work the best for me as far as body and face is called Kiss My Face (brand) olive oil soap (chamomile or lavender) that I buy at the local health food store or at Meijer.  Along with the Squalane Face and Eye whipped mousse from Chagrin Valley and people are actually telling me I have nice skin, something I literally have NEVER heard in my life.

Washing your hair is going to be a whole new experience if you go ‘no poo’ and it’s a process.  There is a detox period of anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks where your hair will look pretty gross.  Wait it out. Do it in the winter, hats, whatever you need to do.  Your hair will adjust but it will take time.  It’s been pumping out oil to counteract what you’ve been doing to it for years.  When suddenly you stop torturing your hair, it’s going to take a little bit for it to figure that out.  Also, you aren’t going to be washing your hair every day anymore, or twice a day.  This means you.  I now wash my hair every 3 to 4 days.  What?? Gross!! No, really.  Hair doesn’t need to be washed every day because you aren’t really getting it dirty (unless you’re doing something extra: working on cars, dumpster diving, construction, rolling in the mud whatever)  The ”dirt” that you are trying so hard to get rid of is actually oil and your hair needs it to be healthy.  Once you get settled into a new hair routine, you will see that you can go for longer periods of time without washing your hair.  I’ve read about some people who don’t wash their hair at all (but I’m not down with that as a goal)

The first thing probably any person who is new to the ‘no-poo’ experience tries out is baking soda and apple cider vinegar (or BS/ACV as it is referred to a lot)  This is probably the most popular method of going no-poo.  To use, it’s pretty simple: take 1 tablespoon of baking soda to 16 oz. of water, mix and pour into hair.  Work it around and rinse. Then, take 3 tablespoons (more or less, the mix will be up to each person) of apple cider vinegar (available at any grocery store) to 16 oz. water and pour into hair.  Work it in, leave a minute or two and rinse very thoroughly.  Yes, this smells like vinegar.  It won’t after it dries.  The baking soda does the cleaning and the apple cider vinegar acts like a conditioner, making the hair soft and shiny.  I still use an occasional ACV rinse to clarify my hair of any buildup from my ‘shampoo.’

My thoughts on BS/ACV method:  the baking soda does clean but after a while I noticed my hair start to dry out/become more brittle.  My lifelong issue with my hair is dryness to the extreme; that straw feeling and I go way back.  So I got online to read some more and discovered there were others who gave up the BS method due to this reason.  So, on to the next try.

The next thing I tried was (believe it or not) light rye flour.  Yes, flour.  It has almost exactly the same ph level as human hair; it is gentle and won’t strip or damage hair.  It worked quite well and aside from mixing up rye flour into paste in the bathroom, I had no complaints about how much my hair liked it.  Although, two very important points: 1. make sure it’s light rye flour, not stone ground or you will be rinsing husks out of your hair for an hour. Don’t ask me how I know this.  2. Make sure you rinse thoroughly. When you are done rinsing, you are not done rinsing.  Rinse some more. Otherwise, you might end up with a stiff piece of hair that has ryemeal stuck to it.  Don’t ask me how I know this.

The next thing I had researched that I wanted to try was coconut milk and aloe but I ended up trying African Black Soap instead, because I ran across it at Meijer.  I had read about this and there were rave reviews about it.  Turns out that it wasn’t the real deal though.

Smells amazing but NOT the real deal.

Apparently the real African Black Soap is a dark brown, not actually black like what i bought. Ha, sucker.  African Black Soap is made from plantain among other natural things. But the one I bought smells amazing so I let it hang out in my bathroom, making it smell nice.  So, that idea was a bust.  (I did try the fake-o in my hair; it got it clean but it left way too much residue, not ph balanced for hair at all)  If I ever get some of the real deal, I’ll update this post.  This, by the way, is the real deal.

The real African Black Soap, said to be great with skin conditions.

The next thing I got was something else I had read about (I should just stop reading) called Bentonite Clay.  I tried that in my hair and it was fine as far as cleansing but it dried my hair out a lot.  However, it makes an amazing mud mask for the face and I highly recommend it for that.  It also has medicinal qualities, so I keep it around the house.

Authentic Rhassoul clay has a grayish pink color to it.

On the clay discussions, I was seeing that people were recommending Rhassoul clay rather than Bentonite clay for hair so I found it at my local health food store.  It said Moroccan red clay (which is what Rhassoul clay is sometimes called) but it turns out it was Ilite clay. Urrrg.  But I had it, so I figured I may as well give it a try.  My hair LOVED the Red Clay.  To date, that is what has worked the best for my hair.  Great at absorbing extra oil as well as exfoliating my scalp.  Of course, it looks like I’ve been sacrificing animals in the bathtub, so it’s a trade-off.  In related news, I found the actual Rhassoul clay on sale at Mountain Rose Herbs, which is like THE go-to place for herbs, clays and things to keep them in.  So once I had the real deal, I tried it and liked it as well.  It didn’t smell as good, but it didn’t look like I was massacring anything either.  I used the Ilite and Rhassoul clays for the longest amount of time.

After a while, though, lazy old me thought, there has to be a better way than standing here, mixing clay and water while trying not to make a mess and heyyy I really need to wash the bathtub now…So, back to reading I go. It was then that I discovered companies were making (in some cases had been making since long before I was born) shampoo bars.  Yes, bars. Like a bar of soap, but it’s really shampoo.  Hmm.

So, I’m going to wrap this up here, as I thought this would be part 2 of 2, not part 2 of 3 but I seem to have developed diarrhea of the fingers (enjoy that thought in your head) so I’ll leave this here and part 3 will tell about the joys and sorrows of shampoo bars.

Until the next time, when I have the time to cough this all up. *Ahem.

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate/Sodium Laureth Sulfate

Sulfates are one of the ingredients that makes all the wonderful bubbles that we equate with clean hair.  Why? Because the commercials tell us that, of course.  What they don’t tell you is that sulfates cause cancer.

Polyethylene Glycol

Known carcinogen.

There are secondary conerns as well, stemming from ingredients that just aren’t good for you, like the silicone agents that don’t allow hair to breathe, and polysorbates that aren’t good for the skin.

So, I decided that I was going to try to lower my exposure to cancer causing ingredients wherever possible.  I started googling and discovered an entire movement of people who have beaten me to it, so I started reading.  I learned about things like the ph of hair, all different recipes for natural soaps and shampoos, the horrible detox period and about different hair types.

So, first things first:  I gathered up all of my ‘beauty products’ for my hair.  This is when I realized just how incredibly wasteful I had been.  I have spent say $10 on a hair product, only to ‘not really care for it’ and never use it again.  Over and over..product junkie.  A big useless attempt to find something that would give me nice, thick, shiny hair like the other girls.  Um, no.  A word about my hair: yuck.  I’ve always had crunchy dry, thin, easily breakable hair that would often turn into an afro on my head.  And none of the products that I spent so much money on ever did a damn thing to change that.  I had a very large box that I filled with stuff I had used and set aside.

The next step: The most horrible process ever.  Detox.

This is where you don’t wash your hair with shampoo obviously because you are trying to get away from that.  Usually, most ‘no poo-ers’ start with baking soda and apple cider vinegar.  One thing you will find, apple cider vinegar features predominantly in the natural living world.  It involves a tablespoon of baking soda (BS) to 16 oz of water.  Hard water can be problematic, so use distilled if you need to.  You work it through your hair..no bubbles!! *cries*  Just pretend you have shampoo in your hand and do the exact same thing but with the BS.  After working it through, rinse thoroughly<–VERY and then do the apple cider vinegar (ACV) rinse.  Use 2 or 3 Tablespoons of ACV to 16 oz water and pour it on your head, working it in and letting it sit for a few.  Yes, it smells like vinegar.  After several minutes, rinse thoroughly<–VERY     Once your hair is dry, it won’t smell like vinegar anymore.

Now for the most unpleasant part of the process..the detox period.  This is a time period of anywhere from 1 week to 6 weeks where your hair is going to look like a giant greaseball.  This is because all the detergents you used to use on your hair was overdrying it, so your scalp would produce more and more oil to compensate for what you were doing to it.  Now you get to pay the price for a little bit.  During the detox period your hair is shocked and it has to get used to producing less oil now that you aren’t overdrying it.  Mine fortunately only lasted about 10 days, and beanies are a wonderful thing.  You know, that was the first time in my entire life I had oily hair.  After the detox period…well, I don’t have dry hair anymore *yay!*  It still feels weird to not have tons of bubbles in my hair but I try to remember that it’s a ‘indoctrination’ residue: being told your whole life that something is a certain way so even at a subconscious level you believe it.  This will pass. Eventually

In my next post, I will discuss other things relating to my no poo journey.  Hopefully this has been educational for someone.

OPINION: Tony Stewart, Kevin Ward,Jr., and the senseless rush to judgement – Road & Track.

My thoughts are with the family of Kevin Ward, Jr., a young driver whose life has been tragically cut short doing what he loved doing, racing.   There are plenty of Tony Stewart haters out there who will be quick to point out that Tony intentionally sped up or deliberately ran over the boy because they were angry with each other.   For anyone who actually sees Tony Stewart get angry, nothing could be further from the truth.  He yells, talks shit and then if all else fails, he uses his fists in a good old fashioned smack down kind of way.   Not even 1% of me believes for one second that Stewart would do something so heinous as to run a fellow driver over, especially given their ages, he probably considered Ward Jr to still be a ‘kid.’  Trolls will be trolls of course but before one can claim to know what kind of man Tony Stewart is, they need to actually get to know some of the actions that Tony is known for.   Even if he was interested in a fight, he’d damn sure use his hands, not vehicular homicide.   Anyone with half a brain knows this man is tearing himself up inside over what happened.   It was a horrible, unfortunate accident.  I saw the video.  Ward Jr NEVER should have been on the track (but I see why he did; he was angry at being spun out by Tony) but he was on a dark dirt track in a black suit and helmet and he practically jumped out in front of the car in front of Tony, who had to swerve to avoid hitting him.  He was on Tony’s blind side as well and Tony just happened to be the one who hit him.   It could just as easily have been the car in front of Tony who hit him.  Horrible and tragic yes..murder, no.