Showing posts with label thrifty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thrifty. Show all posts

Friday, April 13, 2012

does that make me crunchy?

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I just took a shower. I should probably reserve a bit of dignity for myself and not tell you how often I shower. I'll pretend its because I have a busy toddler. But it's not.

Though I now feel the need to share... it isn't good for you to shower every day. Probably not even every other day. Your body has quite a few wonderful self cleaning processes and cleaning too often can really interfere with them. It may lead to acne, dry skin, etc. And then you most likely shower more and put more unhelpful things on your skin in attempt to alleviate the problem. It's a vicious cycle. And any television station you watch or magazine you flip through will be certain to encourage this process.

By "you" I don't mean all of you. Maybe some of you? One of you? Regardless.. just some food for thought. :)

Anywho - I took a shower.

I feel the need to share this information because I feel quite refreshed and pleased with myself after this particular shower.

I used a simple bar of soap with three ingredients.
I did not use shampoo - I recently jumped on the "no 'poo" bandwagon.
I scrubbed with sugar scrub that I made.
Afterwards I brushed my teeth with http://anowlsnest.com/2012/03/31/homemade-toothpaste/.
I might even slap on some homemade deodorant.

That was an incredibly inexpensive, non-toxic, refreshing, healthy shower. :)

How do you feel about each of those things? I'm assuming if you haven't yet heard of it you may be stuck on the "no 'poo" part. No shampoo. That's right. We've given it up. Even if you use natural shampoos.. take a peek at the label. There are a heck of a lot of things in there you probably don't want on your head. What we're doing is pretty simple. I put two cups of water and two tablespoons of baking soda in a spray bottle. There you go. "shampoo"

Tonight was my first try - I've heard your hair can get pretty oily and weird for a little bit after just starting it so I'll post an update later and let you know how it's going.

Why no shampoo, you ask? Shampoo hasn't been around forever. Hair worked out just fine and dandy before it came along. Shampoo actually strips your hair of useful things. It can become oily because its trying to overcompensate. Or dry and frizzy because it isn't trying to compensate. Complicated. Messes with the natural eb and flow of oils. So I'll give my head a chance to get back its equilibrium and see what happens. I'd love to only use baking soda and water on my hair when I shower.. I really would! No dyes, no fragrances, no chemicals, no weird processes to make it, no worry about what happens when it goes down the drain..

Fingers crossed. :)

Friday, December 16, 2011

handmade christmas, installment #1.

I didn't get to work on the idea of handmade Christmas quickly enough this year but I've had a few successful projects. Some of these projects I should not share with you until after Christmas though.

But I can tell you about the wonders of toilet paper rolls and also of brown paper.







Cut the toilet paper and paper towel rolls and use the rings for all kinds of projects! I cut slits and poked holes to string them on yard and make garland!

If you know me in real life or on twitter you may know that I chose not to decorate this Christmas due to a lead dust issue in our house. A complicated story but just no that there were no Christmas decorations in our house until this toilet paper roll thing happened. Free, thrifty, fun! :)

I also used toilet paper rolls to aid in decorating Christmas gifts along with brown paper filler that was included in some boxes from Amazon.



A bit THANK YOU to Amazon and to toilet paper for making this Christmas possible... affordable... fun... and a little handmade. :)