beauty outside the bottle (aka "going 'poo free")

What would you say if I told you I hadn't washed my hair for three days? That no shampoo has touched my hair for two weeks? Would you imagine lank locks dripping with grease? Beauty forsaken? Mind lost?

A while back I probably would have been with you. Not washing your hair for three days??? Ewwww! Occasionally I washed my hair twice in a day, just so it sat right when I went out in the evening. Not anymore. I ditched the shampoo a couple of weeks ago for sodium bicarbonate, the conditioner for apple cider vinegar.

I can't claim any originality in this. A year or so ago I read a post on Consumption Rebellion, in which Eilleen discussed her plans to go shampoo free. It piqued my interest and I couldn't get the idea out of my head.

It wasn't really the chemicals that convinced me to give it a go in the end - we've been using natural shampoos for a couple of years, some of which were woeful and others absolutely delicious. I was more concerned about the plastic bottles I discard all the time. So much waste, so much clogging up the world with nasty petrochemical plastic.

So I did a bit more hunting and found a very helpful 'poo free guide and determined to give it a go. Frank agreed to join me, and when we finished the last shampoo bottle a couple of weeks ago we jumped into bicarb soda and acv.

'Jumped into' is perhaps too positive a way of stating things. In truth we were sceptical, dubious, cautious and at first we didn't like it... crunchy hair due to too much bicarb. Now we are total converts. I am liking my hair more and more. It's soft without being limp, has body without being crunchy and the dandruff is all but gone. And like I said, I haven't had to wash it for three days now. I might even try to stretch it to another day if it still looks OK in the morning.

How pleasantly surprising. And cheap. I've even sourced bulk apple cider vinegar, because what's the point of cutting out on plastic bottles only to throw out multiple glass bottles?

Pantene and every other money-grabbing brand eat your heart out! I don't need your hair prescriptions any more... I've found beauty outside the bottle.