On being crunchy...

Well I was intending on talking about the wonders of baking soda and apple cider vinegar but our family was attacked by another round of viruses. This time bringing fever & chills and sore throats. Brian and I have pretty much sat on the couch all day only taking turns walking Molly around and doing laundry.

We feel a little better now and hopefully we're on the mend.

So onto baking soda and apple cider vinegar. I now use them to wash my hair. Yep, I'm going no 'poo. (no shampoo). My friend told me she and her daughter were using baking soda to wash their hair and I thought "hmmm, okay.". Jump to a few months later and I thought I would give it a go. Everything I've read said to expect gunky, greasy hair for the first two weeks while your scalp "detoxes" and then you will have beautiful, shiny hair.

So I tried it. I mix up 1 tablespoon baking soda to 1 cup of hot water in a squeezable ketchup bottle (like the kind at the restaurants, you can find them at the grocery store, minus the ketchup). I massage my scalp to loosen the dirt and then squirt the mixture all over. I also massage this in and wait about a minute. Then I rinse it thouroughly. Next I take 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar and dump it on the ends of my hair (not my scalp). I work it in and then rinse it a little. The vinegar makes my hair so soft. The vinegary smell goes away when it's dry.

I did find that the first 2 weeks my hair was a little greasy and my scalp itchy but now my hair and scalp feel so clean. My hair is full and shiny and my wavy hair is back. In fact, one day I hopped in the shower without my mixture and just used regular shampoo. My hair felt so weighted down and greasy the next day.

So there you have it. I'm becoming crunchier everyday. First cloth diapering, now baking soda. Actually now that we cloth diaper we are not only saving money by not having to buy disposables, but we went down one garbage can size. That saves us $15.00 per month. We've also bought a huge pack of microfiber towels at Costco to use instead of the million paper towels we were going through. Brian is building a worm bin in the backyard so we can start composting our leftover veggies, egg shells, tea and coffee grinds.

God created this beautiful world and charged us with taking care of it. I don't buy into all the global warming talk but I do think we can do things that are healthier for our children and the enviroment.

Since so many of you asked, I'll be writing more about cloth diapering. It's really fun and really not that much work.