Transitions

Several months ago (perhaps even longer ago than that) I decided to try getting away from plastic. First was plastic shopping bags. I transitioned to reusable ones and felt really good about that for a while. 
Shortly after that, a family friend introduced me to homemade laundry detergent. It's incredibly inexpensive (usually just 2 pennies per load), easy to make, and works really well! I got the recipe and I've shared it with others since then. So far, it gets rave reviews. There are a few people who said they still pre-treat stubborn stains, but otherwise it's their preferred laundry detergent now. I felt really good about eliminating all those laundry detergent bottles from my life. I even tweaked the detergent recipe to have an all  natural version (which I like, though it doesn't work as well on really dirty clothes, so I usually have both versions on hand).
I'll include the recipe below.


After feeling pretty proud of myself for getting rid of plastic grocery bags and plastic laundry detergent bottles I started to think about where to go next. I decided I needed to get rid of those plastic produce bags you put your vegetables in at the grocery store. So I started to look online for reusable alternatives. I found two options that got me thinking. The first was a poly mesh which allowed your food to breath while in the refrigerator and also allowed you to see what was in each bag. The other was a cotton bag which didn't allow you to see the contents but wasn't made of plastic. That's when it hit me - I was using resuable shopping bags (yay me!) but they were still made of plastic.

I started a downward spiral of obsessed thinking about whether or not a person living in modern day America could ever really eliminate plastic from their lives. I saw a documentary in which a few people claim to purchase/consume/use less than one pound of plastic a year... but I wasn't sure I really believed them. How do you buy shampoo? or cleaning products? I've never seen a store that sold these items in glass bottles or in bulk 'fill-your-own-container' type stations. Then I realized... you'd have to make your own! So I started to do some research and I found there was one ingredient common to at least 85% of the products I was researching:

Vinegar.

Well ok... so I'd need to buy lots of vinegar. It isn't expensive at all...

but I've only ever seen it sold in plastic bottles.

So now what?!? How do you make your own vinegar?!? So I started to do more research. Apparently everyone says it's not difficult at all... but from what I've been reading, it doesn't exactly seem easy either. You have to start with some "Mother of Vinegar" (which has become the new, fun to use, friendly for children's ears, expletive in my family these days). You add feed stock to it and let it go. The feed stock depends on what type of vinegar you want. Apples for apple cider vinegar, wine for white wine vinegar, and the list goes on. But, it takes 3-6 months to turn into vinegar, and then it only stays good/usable for 3-6 months after that. Most people sort of have a rolling batch going, where they add a little bit of feedstock ever week or so to a pot with a spigot on the bottom, and they just use the vinegar out of the same pot. 
I wasn't quite ready to take on that challenge, so I decided that for now I'd buy my vinegar and just do my best to reuse the plastic bottles. We're in the process of moving to a new house (another transition) so I thought maybe once I was settled at the new place I could set up a vinegar station.

So I decided to try making my own shampoo and conditioner. I did some research online and found the same recipe over and over again:
Shampoo: 1 tablespoon baking soda + 1 cup water. 
Conditioner: 1 tablespoon vinegar + 1 cup water.

You're kidding right? I gave it a try. Well, I wasn't impressed with the shampoo. I mixed it up and it just looked like water to me. A few recipes said it could be thickened with oatmeal so I got out my oatmeal and my mortar and pestle and crushed it up as best I could. Well, that was a flop! The oatmeal didn't really dissolve, so I ended up with chunks of oatmeal all through my hair (which no amount of rinsing could completely remove). I've suspended my efforts on the homemade shampoo. I intend to try a heavier concentration of baking soda and seeing how that works, but most of the blogs rave about how the baking soda doesn't strip your natural oils out of your hair. Well, at some point, when my hair is all greasy looking, don't I want some of that oil to be removed? This adventure is 'to be continued'.

Next was conditioner. After being disappointed with the shampoo I decided not to waste my time with such insufficient amounts of vinegar. I hopped in the shower with about 10 tablespoons of straight vinegar in a cup. When I was ready to condition my hair I filled the cup the rest of the way (about half of the cup) with water. So I had a 50:50 ratio of vinegar to water. I poured about half the cup on my hair, then filled the cup with water again (creating, essentially, a 25:75 ratio of vinegar to water). I poured the rest into my hair and started to comb through my hair. I have naturally curly hair, so I always comb my conditioner through in the shower, rinse my hair and towel dry, and don't comb it again until my next shower. I've heard of putting vinegar in your laundry rinse cycle for use as a fabric softener (which I hear works very well) so it made sense to me that vinegar would work as a conditioner for my hair. My big concern, though, was whether or not it would also work as a detangling agent for my hair which can be tough to comb through. I was amazed at how well the vinegar worked! 
The blogs said my hair would NOT smell like vinegar afterwards. Well, perhaps it was because I used 10 times more vinegar than the recipe called for, but I could smell it faintly when I was done. I use a styling product in my hair, and after adding that, I could no longer smell the vinegar. 
I tried again the second and third days to see if I could get the same results with less vinegar, and to see what the results were like after several days. I have to say, I'm down to using approximately 5 tablespoons of vinegar in one cup of water and I'm still really impressed. I'm going to continue using less and less vinegar until I don't get the same results. 
I've done some really rough estimations on cost. If I use 4 tablespoons of conditioner per use, I spend approximately 4 cents per use. Based on my estimations of how much regular conditioner I use each day, I spend about 5 cents per use. Now, I buy the inexpensive conditioners that cost just a dollar for a 15 oz bottle. So if you're spending more than that, your cost will obviously be different. So, I'm not seeing too much of a cost savings, but on the plus side, if I use vinegar for enough things, I'll always have it around, and shouldn't ever have to worry about running out of conditioner! Also, I'm avoiding lots of man-made chemicals!
One word of caution if you decide to use vinegar:  it burns! It burns your eyes if you over pour, and it burns your legs if you nick yourself shaving. So be careful! 


There are several other transitions occurring in my life right now. A new house and a new pastor at my church to name a couple. I was going to talk about them all here but it seems I've already spent quite some time just talking about my transition from plastic. Guess you'll have to wait for the rest. Hopefully soon I'll have some great pictures to show of our new home!

That's my life!


Laundry Detergent
1 bar fels naptha - grate with cheese grater, melt in approximately 6 cups hot (but not boiling) water (a little more/less than 6 cups won't matter)
Mix 1.5 cups borax and 1.5 cups washing soda (NOT baking soda!) in 5 gallon bucket
Pour in melted fels naptha
Fill bucket 3/4 full (or a little fuller depending on your preference) with warm water. 
Mix well
Let sit 24 hours before use for best results - if you didn't add lots of extra water, it will turn into a gel (probably with some liquid in there as well). 
I use 1/2 cup per load. Some recipes say to use just 1/4 cup, others a full cup. After it has sat for a while, you may need to shake it up just a little.

For an all natural version, replace fels naptha with Dr. Bronner's all natural soap.

As an additional  note: I tried the powdered soap version and it was a TON of arm shattering mixing and I was not at all happy with the results (both in effective washing and in the amount of soap I got for the amount of money and work).