Officially shampoo & conditioner-free

That's right! Ok, my sister's first reaction was "Ehw, that's disgusting!". But I didn't say that I wasn't washing my hair anymore, just that I had stopped using shampoo and conditioner.
The revolution to change the world does have to start from our own households and so....I started to think....I have to take these life-style choices a step further. It's good to start eating in a conscientious way, trying to use the car the least possible...but what about all the chemicals that
a) we put onto our skins: our skin is the largest organ of our body and it DOES absorb everything you put on it! So look at the ingredients of soaps, shampoos, toothpastes in your bathroom, and just think of what your poor body, blood and organs have to deal with.
b) wash down into the drains, into rivers and oceans, into crops, the air we breathe...it's all a vicious cycle.

It really hit me when my mother walked into the bathroom and said: "Dr Mercola says: 'If you can't eat it, then don't put it on your skin.'"

Simple. If I can't eat it, I'm not putting it onto my skin. So let's get to it, it's as simple as this:

"SHAMPOO":

- baking soda
- water

You can either leave the consistency quite "pastey", or you can actually liquify and pour it onto your head (if so, use hot water to dilute the bicarb). There will be no bubbles, no allluring perfumes of tropical plants....but it cleans your hair! I have long hair, so I preferred to keep the consistency like a paste. You don't need to apply it onto the whole length of your hair, because that really isn't the part of the hair that needs washing.

I have found other recipes using chick-pea flour, buckweat flour....you can really start experimenting. I tried the chick-pea flour this morning and found it to be a bit too drying for my hair (but might work for you if you have very oily hair).

So that's the shampoo done for you, healthier for you, for the environment, and for your wallets.

"CONDITIONER":

- apple-cider vinegar
- water

Mix the two together: I emptied out an old transparent bath-gel container and used that. Put in about half a cup of vinegar, and the rest water. You "rinse" your hair with this after you've washed the bicarbonate soda out of your hair. The vinegar removes any residue from your hair and....it stinks. Yes, and it really burns if it gets into your eyes BUT fear not! Once the hair dries the smell evaporates, and it leaves it nice and soft. Then use water to rinse this out.

So that's how to wash your hair with 3 ingredients that you can easily buy in your supermarket spending very little money and being eco and self-friendly.

P.S. Brush your hair BEFORE washing it, helps with the tangles. You could also try putting some oils into your hair if you want to give it a bit of nutritious love.

Nutritional mask for your hair

It's a few years now that I've been trying to grow my hair, and I always seem to reach a stage of "I can't stand it anymore!", and chop it all off. Well, none of that is going to happen anymore...I mean, looking back at photos of me with short hair reminds me of my "equastrian look". That's right, I sustain that I look like a horse, much to my best-friend's funny looks every time I use this expression. I just feel that short hair brings out the horse within me. It's a long story....I'd have to start from Etruscan history (on the right is a picture of me and my family on a day out)....exactly, I won't go there.
Anyway, so now that I have almost-long hair, I want to look after it properly, and I've found a wonderful recipe from the blog of Semplicemente Vera that will bring your hair back to life! The following amounts are a bit scarce for me (I have quite long hair)...so if need be, just throw in a bit extra yogurt, as well as everything else (caution on the turmeric.....stories of me as the Jaundice Monster later on....)

Here are the ingredients:
- 2 big spoons of natural yogurt
- 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder
- 1 tablespoon of camomile tea
- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
- 10 drops of vegetable oil
- 1 spoon of honey or malt
- 2 big spoons of lin seeds (instructions on how to prepare them down below)

Apply to hair and keep in for about 20 minutes.

Some notes before you run off to make it yourself! Please read on!

IF you have very light blonde hair, avoid the turmeric (or just use very little of it): it tends to give your hair a very golden color....yes, almost yellow. I have a sort of boring dark colored hair (not very dark, but not light enough to be considered blonde). I got talked into doing some blonde highlights a while back (yes, always blame others when you can), and they really took on the turmeric color! So just be careful. If you're not that light I'd give it a go, because it does make your hair a pretty honeycomb color.

The lemon juice, honey, and camomile are the lightening agents: don't imagine any sort of hairdressing chemical blonde results...but they do give a nice light to your hair, especially if you go in the sun afterwards.

The Lin seeds (aka flax seeds?): how to handle them: put them to soak the night before. What I do is that I put them in a sieve on top of a bowl, and put the water on top of them -- it's much easier to handle them when you'll need them the next morning. Basically, you just lift the sieve up and you'll see that they're already really oily! Now, the first time I did this mask, I wizzed them up and just mixed them in with the rest of the ingredients....the result is that I am still finding lin seeds in the bathroom!!! It took ages to get them out, and they just got all over the place, much to my mother's delight....so I learned my lesson. After you've wizzed them, place the whole concoction back into the sieve and press them with a spoon so that the foamy-oily stuff comes out. It's quite amazing...I would say that the consistency is how you would imagine lizard saliva to look like. So there you've got a very home-made version of lin-seed extract, which you can use for other recipies as well (such as natural hair gel: I'll put the recipe for this on soon). Wait a minute: don't throw out the fibrous stuff that's left! I just stuck the whole lot into my cereal bowl, but you don't need to do everything I say. I think it'd be really good in a salad, or just thrown into a soup as well. Very nutritious, so it's a pity to waste.

The Jaundice Monster: I don't know if you've ever dropped turmeric anywhere...well, if you haven't, and you're not intentionally planning to do it, steer well away! It stains everything yellow!
I apply the mask over the bathroom sink, with the bowl underneanth me.....you'll see, you'll try to start off all prim and propper, and then it just all goes down the drain when yellow stuff starts dripping everywhere. Once you're done, wrap your hair up in plastic wrap...trust me....you will soon find out that the heat from your head starts to "melt" the mask, and you'll have nice trickles of yellow oil coming down your neck and face...aaaaaaaaahhhh, the Jaundice Monster is here! Mmm....maybe not a good thing to do with a boyfriend in the house. It's very attractive: a yellow head, with yellow stuff coming down....good enough to test anybody's love.
Lesson to be learned and remembered:
- do not wear a white top when doing this (unless you need an excuse to throw it out)
- do not sit on mother's white divan while waiting for it to seep in...actually, get yourself back into the kitchen and clean up the mess you made!
- wear a singlet top that's easy to take off

I can tell you the mask works: I did one this morning, and my hair is really soft and shiny. My sister refuses to look at me from how good my hair looks (and it just reminds her of her beautiful long hair that she cut off not so long ago...). She even sustains that I made her cut her hair so that I would look better! The madness of it all....I wasn't even on the European continent when she did the deed!