Beyond Food

As I alluded to several posts ago, I have finally moved beyond food in my homemade experimenting!  Last week I used up the last of the shampoo in my bottle.  Then I scrounged around and found some sample packets of shampoo in my travel stash.  But on Monday morning, I used the last of those and it was time to make some shampoo!

Living in Seattle makes going homemade fairly easy.  I don't have to look far to find raw materials or resort to ordering them online.  Up in north Seattle Zenith Supplies carries all the oils, butters, etc., to make any sort of personal care products I will need.  Monday morning we made our first visit and bought supplies for shampoo, a hair butter for Isa and a project that I'm working up the courage to try (more on that in a future post).

Here is the recipe I used for the shampoo:

1/4 cup Castile soap (I used unscented)

1/4 cup distilled water

2 tsp jojoba oil

10 drops grapefruit essential oil  (a scent I love- choose any scent you prefer!)

I tried it this morning and am happy to report that I got copious amounts of lather.  It rinsed out completely and since the mix had jojoba, I didn't follow my wash with conditioner.  My scalp and hair feel great!

I should add that I have very short hair which is straight and fine, although not thin.  It's pretty boring, basic hair that doesn't need a lot of special attention.  If you have dry hair, then perhaps add a little more oil or follow with conditioner.  If you have oily hair, then perhaps add peppermint essential oil and/or tea tree oil.

Now that I've started the process of replacing store bought personal care products with homemade versions, I thought I should take a photo of the shelves in our bathroom.  This is what they looked like today: 

(Sorry for the glare but we actually had SUNSHINE today!)

Obviously, you can see that I didn't edit anything out or clean things up- this is truly a BEFORE shot!  The very top of the shelves holds a lamp (proof that I am a world class procrastinator, but that's a story for another post), a large metal box with just a few of Isa's many hair accessories and the train case, which holds my makeup.   The basket on the top left of the photo holds old cloth diapers used as cleaning cloths.  The middle top basket holds my hair products.  The top right basket holds Isa's hair products.  The bottom baskets are totally random storage- everything from travel sized products (in the sideways plastic box) to nail polish to a really large bottle of hand sanitizer, which honestly, we never use.  I'm hopeful that by the end of the year we will have used up all the random products and replaced them with homemade products, eliminating quite a bit of the clutter on those shelves.  I promise to post progress reports as the year continues.