Just found this post from Mrs. Accountability about using baking soda and vinegar on her hair. I’m excited to start doing this myself. I’ve made a lot of changes in personal hygiene over the last few years. I only wash my hair every third day, and I switched to chemical free shampoo a year or so ago, but dang is it every expensive. I switched to vinegar as a conditioner around the same time, and I’m excited to use baking soda instead of shampoo now. I gave up all my normal body lotions too, and switched to just plain organic cocoa butter, which I love. I use baking soda and vinegar to clean just about everything in my house – why not my hair? Thanks for the tip, Mrs. A!
And here’s a post from Money Blue Book that reminded me of a recent car problem I had… A few days ago I drove to a nearby town to meet a friend for lunch. My car spends most of its time in the garage (I’ve driven it 1900 miles in the last 9 months), but lunch was about 15 miles away, so I drove. On my way home – luckily only about three miles from home – I heard a clunking noise and pulled over. I was bummed to see that the pipe going from my engine to the muffler had broken and the muffler was only supported on the tailpipe side, and clunking rather noisily along the ground on the other side. Not good. The muffler was too hot to touch, and I obviously couldn’t keep going with it dragging on the ground. I didn’t have a cell phone with me, and all I could think about was that my baby was going to start getting hungry pretty soon, and his only food source was under my shirt, by the side of the road, three miles from home. So I dug around in the car and found an old sock that we had been using to wipe the dipstick when we check the oil. I was able to use that to keep from burning myself when I held the muffler up. Then I found an old pair of boxer shorts that had been turned into a rag (not sure why they were in my car, but I’m glad they were). I tore the shorts to make a rope, and used it to tie the muffler up to a bracket on the underside of the car. It was pretty sketchy – I could see the shorts straining under the weight of the muffler, and I could only get the end of the muffler about 2 inches off the ground. But it would have to do. I got back in and drove – very slowly – home. I’m sure I provided a good deal of entertainment to the people driving behind me (“are those boxer shorts holding up her muffler? – I wonder if she knows about it?!”). My brother has offered to come over and help us replace the broken pipe later this week, for which I’m very grateful. Because while the boxer shorts were a huge help, they’re probably not the best long-term solution.
Michelle says
I’ve used vinegar in my hair before and it works great to get rid of build up. My step-father used baking soda, but I never got around to trying it myself. I think I’ll give it a go :)
Mrs. Accountability says
Good afternoon, FB! Thanks for the mention! Like I said it takes a bit of experimenting but I know you’ll get the hang of it. I can relate to that feeling of wanting to get back home to a hungry baby – great use of the resources you had on hand!
Kathryn B. says
Can you recommend some good sources for plain organic cocoa butter? Also, how does the cost compare to lotion?
FrugalBabe says
Kathryn, I just went to go look at my current jar, and it looks like I bought a non-organic version this time… It’s made by NOW, I bought it at Wild Oats/Whole Foods, and it cost about $4. A little goes a very long way – I use far less than I would use of a liquid lotion. The one downside is that it’s hard and has to be scraped out of the jar with a spoon, but when you rub it between your hands, it softens pretty fast. In the past, I’ve bought organic cocoa butter for about $5 or $6 per jar. A jar lasts me several months – I use it on my face, arms, legs, and on my belly while I was pregnant. Works great, and has no chemicals or gunk in it. I’ve found that all of our local health food stores carry some type of plain cocoa butter or cocoa butter/jojoba oil combination, which I also like.
Jenny says
I’ll be interested to hear how you like using the baking soda! :)