Saturday, March 31, 2012

Unschooling Makes Me Crunchy!

So all this free time I have when we are not schooling has led me to reading up on being more green in lots of areas of our life. In the garden, we are using more compost (which I found needs more "brown" (leaves mainly) than I was giving it. That remedied I really hope for more black gold later in the season. We are also using cardboard in the bottoms of our raised beds as weed deterents. And of course, I have found several sprays and solutions to use on plants to keep the pests at bay.

For in the home, I have found fabulous recipes for homemade laundry soap and dishwasher detergent. Mostly they are made from Borax and Washing Soda. I recently made these and they work beautifully. The laundry soap costs approximately 70-95 CENTS for a batch that will wash 64 loads of laundry! Hows that for economic!?! It calls for you to grate a bar of soap of your choosing into the batch and I used the soaps we brought home from Disney World this past fall. This way my laundry smell will bring back great memories for me. I used 2 1 gallon milk jugs, well washed, to hold the laundry soap.

 http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2011/08/homemade-laundry-soap-revisited.html

The dishwasher detergent was about $1.00 per batch and it makes about 16 loads. The added bonus to this recipe is that there is lemon juice and white vinegar in it and in using it, I have eliminated the film my hard water leaves on the dishes. Also, I had found in the past that I really needed to rinse ALL the food stuffs off the plates and dishes before loading the dishwasher. I did a trial run and didn't rinse all the dishes before adding this homemade detergent. The results were amazing! All dishes were squeaky clean, even the unrinsed ones! I am sold on this recipe too.

http://bonzaiaphrodite.com/2010/02/natural-homemade-liquid-dishwasher-detergent/

I decided that I wanted to find a recipe for shampoo and conditioner. So in searching I stumbled on www.crunchybetty.com  . This blog gave tons of great advice and recipes for going more natural and green. I found a great hair care recipe using just castile soap and coconut milk. Sounded simple enough. And conditioners with just apple cider vinegar and water (which I knew already made a great conditioner from when we had the lice issue in our house...but that is a WHOLE other blog story LOL)

 http://www.crunchybetty.com/not-ready-for-no-poo-try-sorta-poo-with-coconut-milk-and-castille

Then as I continued to read Crunchy Betty, I found a whole blog on using NO POO. Seems if you use a 1 to 3 part ratio of baking soda to water and massage it in your scalp every 3-4 days and rinse it well and then use a 1 to 3 part ratio of apple cider vinegar and water to condition and then rinse out (or not) you can get away with no commericial shampoo and conditioner at all.

http://www.crunchybetty.com/no-poo-to-you-too
 
Well, now I am intrigued and of course have to try this. If it works for me, I will start doing this with my kids and hopefully my honey as well. The results are supposed to be healthier, thicker, sometimes even darker hair. All that I have read says you have to get past the 9th -12th day before your hair and head stops panicking and overproducing oils, but you can take care of that also by brushing in a little cornstarch to absorb the oils. They recommend wearing ponytails and/or hats to avoid the whole greasy hair look. I think I will just stay home LOL.

Anyway, I am going NO POO as of April 1st. I should have lovely, healthy hair by the end of the month! We shall see!Oh and by the way, all of these links can be found on my pinterest boards as well!

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