The Dog ate my Conditioner! Homemade Haircare Adventures
Sustainable Living
February 3, 2012 at 1:00 am
by Kate-Ruffing
As part of our sustainable living adventures, our family enjoys periodically going to the extreme. One suggestion from a reader was to make our own beauty products.
Homemade shampoos, conditioners, body lotions, lip balms, and a whole host of other products can be made from all-natural sources found right in your kitchen (or natural food store). These products don’t contain petroleum-based chemicals that affect you or your local watershed. They also have benefits such as lack of excessive plastic packaging and they don’t require gas-guzzling transportation to get to your bathroom. But the question in our house was, “Will they work”?
We conducted a recipe search and asked our readers to submit their favorites. After experimenting and modifying different formulas, we felt confident that we had discovered recipes for body lotion and lip balm that we both liked and that worked. But effective hair care products continued to allude us.
We mixed up hair rinses that gently and naturally removed the oils from our hair through the use of apple cider vinegar or vodka (for the over 21 family members). These recipes worked to deliver shiny and oil free hair, but boy did it sting if you got it in your eyes. And don’t even think about using it if you had just shaved your legs!
The smell of the vinegar-based hair products were also a bit polarizing. While the odor was non-existent once your hair dried, I was repeatedly accused of being attacked but a salad bar if I paraded around with a still-wet head.
The shampoos we tried were gentle and had lovely fragrances thanks to the bouquet of essential oils used, but lacked that rich lather that we were used to. They also tended to leave long hair feeling rubbery which led us to start experimenting with conditioners.
First, I tried an egg-based conditioner. I applied the formula and waited 5 minutes before rinsing. What I failed to understand was that given the high-heat of my shower water, and the fact that the egg was not thoroughly blended with the other ingredients, the product curdled in my hair. It looked like someone had been making scrambled eggs in our shower – yuck!
The second conditioner recipe had heavy cream, avocado, and olive oil. It was blended smooth and kept in the refrigerator until use. This was a problem as I kept forgetting about it being downstairs until I was all wet and soapy. Finally, I got my act together and was ready to try it out. But when I reached to grab it off the bathroom counter, the bowl was mysteriously empty. I was perplexed. Where could it have gone?
On cue, in walks our dog Riley, a true “garbage gut” in the four-legged community, licking his lips and looking for more. Mystery solved on the disappearing conditioner but did it work to deliver soft, flowing locks of hair? Not really – It worked just okay on my hair. But I will tell you, Riley’s fur has never looked better!
Follow Kate Ruffing’s Sustainable Living adventures and discover solutions for your family at www.KateRuffing.com
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