Living Simply
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I’m trying out the no-poo movement. It’s only been a week, and the jury is still out. No, I’m not talking about actual poo, but shamPOO. I was skipping around the blogosphere one day, following links hither and yon, and came across an entry similar to this one. She tried it, she liked it, she does it. I thought I would give it a go, too. I hate spending tons of money on my hair. I hate recycling those bottles. Cheap, easy, and something I could buy in bulk. I’m in!
Want to know what I’m using to wash my hair? BAKING SODA! Yup, the same stuff you cook with and sometimes clean with, I’m washing my hair with.
My hair is shiny. It’s clean. I’m only using baking soda and water to wash it. Two tablespoons of baking soda dissolved in two cups of water for my long hair. I could follow up with an apple cider vinegar rinse, but we don’t have any at the moment.
My only issue is that yesterday, even after washing twice, it was slightly greasy. Clean but greasy, if that makes sense. It looked OK, but felt weird. The website I’m using as a resource says that’s normal as your hair adjusts. My hair runs towards oily naturally, and it had been a few days since I’d washed it and that last afternoon I’d been outside sweating and working in the yard, so with all those factors, that bit of oily feeling would have been natural. Today, though, I washed and it feels just fine! So, maybe it was just a combination of adjusting and going too long between washes.
I’m going to give it a bit longer before I make my final decision. I like how my hair looks and feels. I certainly like the cost, what 50 cents a pound? I definitely want to try the apple cider vinegar rinse. I’ll keep ya posted.
For more information and instructions, head here: Info: Shampoo Free
Susan @ August 15, 2008
Living Simply
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We’re planning our second family camping trip this week. Our first adventure wasn’t as environmentally friendly as I would have liked, so I thought I’d share what I want to change plus some other green camping ideas I’ve come across.
- We brought along our 5 gal. water jug thinking that as the ice melted, we could drink the cool water and it would taste better than the water from the spigot at the campground. Well, it did such a good job keeping the ice cold that the ice didn’t melt. We ended up purchasing ice and 3-4 gallons of water from the campground, costing us money AND the darn plastic to deal with. The campground didn’t recycle (they’ll be getting a letter about that!) and we didn’t have enough room to pack out all of the recyclables. Solution: empty out our ice maker into the water jug and fill with filtered water from home. It adds more weight to the car, cutting down on gas mileage, but I think that will be negligible compared to the cost of water and ice, plus we won’t have to recycle water bottles or throw away the plastic bags from the ice.
- Instead of using regular ice in the cooler, which needed to be replaced daily (again $ and a non-reusable, non-recyclable plastic bag) use a combination of dry ice and regular ice. The dry ice will keep the regular ice frozen, and the regular ice will insulate the food from touching and being freezer burnt from the dry ice.
- Start bagging ice the week before the trip so that we have enough to fill the drink cooler and the food cooler at home. Depending on the length of the trip and whether or not we use dry ice, we may not have to purchase more.
- Instead of packing paper napkins and paper towels, pack cloth napkins and bar/kitchen towels. Both can be easily washed by hand and hung to dry. If we don’t totally replace the paper products, at least we’ll be using less.
- Save dryer sheets and lint to use as a fire starter. I need to do more research about the dryer sheets as I’m not sure if the chemicals on them are a problem or not. I read somewher to stuff the dryer lint into empty toilet paper rolls. They make great gifts for your camping friends!
- Use an empty liquid laundry detergent bottle for non-potable water storage. It has a neat spigot and is perfect for hand washing or other quick water needs. I marked it with a big “DO NOT DRINK”. I just might keep one in my trunk for those inevitable kiddo messes at the park.
We’re gonna have fun!
Susan @ August 13, 2008
It's All Relative
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This thing being this website/blog/whatever it is. I started it as a place to put all my writing in one spot instead of locked away in my hard drive or spread throughout the Internet. I envision it as a Jackson Pollock painting. He was the dude that threw or dripped paint at the canvas and it ended up beautiful, or at least the ones we see in museums and books have a nice look at me quality. We don’t know what he burned in the bonfire.
I’ve been reading lots of blogs lately and the ones I like most are well-written and have some sort of focus. I’m hoping this is well-written enough not to be too boring, *smirk* but does the lack of focus count as focus?
The plan, the throw all the words on the canvas and see what sticks plan, is both helping and hindering me. As in life, I’ve so many interests, I don’t focus on just one. I know lots of little bits about lots of little things. Who is going to come back to keep reading about who knows what?
So by throwing it all out there, I’m hoping that the focus/niche/whatever will become aparant to me. As is usual, you, dear readers and friends, will probaly figure it out before me, but don’t tell me, because unless I go through all this angst, I won’t believe you until I figure it out for myself. Though feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think! Maybe you can help me sort through this Gordian knot.
The picture is an endless knot.
Susan @ August 11, 2008
