One issue I find frustrating about trying to stay an ecofrugal lifestyles is locating personal care merchandise that meet my standards. If rate had been all I cared approximately, I must wash my face with any moderate cleaner and get quite applicable outcomes. But considering that I additionally want the products I use to be dependable and cruelty-loose, I have to look at the label on every product seeking out ones without parabens and animal sorting out. The few merchandise on the shelf that in shape those criteria can price ten dollars or extra for a bottle?And more disturbing nevertheless, they frequently come now not in bottles but in tubes. Not best are those non-recyclable, it's far quite a whole lot no longer feasible to squeeze all of the product out of the tube earlier than discarding it, so you have to toss as an entire lot as half of an ozPerhaps sixty cents' really worth?Of your high priced product.
At one factor remaining 12 months, I got pissed off enough over this that I decided to attempt making my very own face wash. I went looking on-line for some recipes that have been not too complex to make and didn't name for any elements that have been too expensive or hard to locate, and I in the end hit on one at Live Simply with pleasant 3 substances: 4 factors honey, one thing olive oil, and four components aloe vera gel, which I happened to have handy already because of the reality I'd tried it (unsuccessfully) as a hair product. All I had to do modified into mix the elements collectively and find out a container to area them in. I used the bottle from my previous face wash (truly an organic infant wash that I'd been able to pick up cheap as it turned into discontinued) and carried out it with a chunk guide face scrubber from Sephora.
And lo and behold, it honestly worked. In fact, this easy aggregate of additives did a higher procedure of preserving my pores and skin clean and smooth than any highly-priced product I'd shelled out for inside the past. The disturbing zits-like bumps that had despatched me to two distinct dermatologists over a five-year duration, and which nonetheless hadn't clearly lengthy past away even if I commenced out diligently making use of two one-of-a-kind topical treatments for rosacea morning and nighttime, vanished almost absolutely. And every 1/2-cup batch was costing me best 76 cents. All and now not the use of a animal checking out (the honey is an animal product, but the bees do no longer go through) and no weird substances. I'd found the proper ecofrugal pores and skin product!
I modified into so happy with the manner this became out that I idea I'd see if I have to control to drag off the identical trick with hair care. I've tried all forms of products in my hair?Reasonably-priced shampoos, expensive shampoos, cheap conditioners, costly conditioners, depart-in conditioners, pomades, warm oil remedies, and diverse DIY alternatives?And in no manner determined a hair care habitual that I turned into absolutely satisfied with. For the past few years, I'd been getting more or much less ideal outcomes thru skipping shampoo absolutely and counting on OGX Coconut Curls conditioner as a co-wash, conditioner, and leave-in multi function, however it wasn't really ideal; I needed to examine quite a variety of it put up-shower to tame the frizz, and it left pretty a few build-up on my scalp. So I commenced out looking for a few DIY conditioner recipes that could do the trick better, the use of the same criteria I'd implemented for the face wash: a easy recipe and now not the use of a steeply-priced or tough-to-discover elements.
Well, this turned out to be kind of a tall order. When I searched for "homemade conditioner," most sources recommended an apple cider vinegar rinse, which I'd already tried with no success whatever, and which obviously wouldn't work as a styling product. When I tried "DIY leave-in conditioner," most sources suggested just taking "your favorite conditioner" and mixing it with water (and maybe a little olive oil) in a spray bottle. Not a bad idea, but not helpful if what you're looking for is an alternative to "your favorite conditioner." An "easy" recipe from Oh, The Things We'll Make! called for an emulsifier called BTMS that you can't just buy at the drugstore, and that I wasn't about to order a whole bunch of just to test out a conditioner recipe that might not even work for me. And a collection of 10 Homemade Hair Conditioners Using Ingredients From Your Kitchen featured only deep-conditioning treatments that you leave on for several minutes and rinse—nothing that could double as a co-wash or a leave-in.
Eventually, I came across this page with 14 Homemade Leave-In Conditioner Recipes specifically for natural curls, of which one—the "Honey Butter Balm"—looked simple enough to be worth a try. It called for only four ingredients, two of which (coconut oil and honey) I already had. I thought I could safely leave out the few drops of lavender oil, which seemed to be just for scent, so all I needed to buy was some pure shea butter. After a bit of searching, I found a 6-ounce container of this at Sally Beauty for about seven bucks—not too bad if I could get six batches of conditioner out of it.
Mixing up the ingredients proved more difficult than I expected. The shea butter was very thick and hard to scoop out of the jar, and it took quite a lot of heating and stirring to get it to combine with the coconut oil and honey. And when I finally got it all mixed and put it in a little tub and chilled it to re-solidify it, as the recipe suggested, the honey dropped out of the suspension and formed a thin layer on the bottom of the container. So I had to stir it in by hand before I could use it.
Sadly, after all that trouble, this did not prove to be the ultimate conditioning solution I'd been looking for. The mixture was still very thick, and while you might think this would just mean a little goes a long way, getting it to go a long way wasn't so easy. By means of rubbing it between my hands and mixing it with water, I finally managed to get my damp hair coated in the stuff, and I actually did feel like it produced pretty enviable curls—but the next day, my hair was limp and bedraggled, completely weighed down by this heavy mixture. Worse still, my regular co-washing routine didn't seem to be enough to get this goop out of my hair again. I had to resort to my husband's shampoo, which I normally shun because it's far too drying, and I still wasn't convinced I'd managed to get my hair quite clean again.
I'm still wondering if there's some way I might be able to put this stuff to use. Maybe if I use only a teeny tiny bit of it, I might be able to get those fabulous curls I enjoyed on my first day without the bad side effects—but how to spread such a teeny tiny bit across my hair is, I will confess, a mystery. So for now, it's back to my old commercial conditioner.
However, I'm not giving up entirely on the idea of finding a DIY solution. This collection of 10 Best Homemade Conditioners For Curly Hair, for instance, includes a three-ingredient conditioner—lemon juice, olive oil, and coconut milk—that could conceivably be worth a try. When I tried straight coconut milk as a leave-in, the results were disappointing, leaving my hair limp and greasy, but it's possible the lemon juice could mitigate that. And if that doesn't work, there's always this flaxseed gel from Naturally Curly. We have all the ingredients for both of these, so even if they don't work, they won't cost too much to try.
