The World of No ‘Poo

Last night I heard coyotes. Usually, I can’t hear them when I’m in the house. I only hear them occasionally when I take Hannah Joy at night. However, last night they woke me up with their yowling. Hannah Joy heard them too. She went on “yellow alert” and growled as we both went to look out of the window. The night was too dark to see anything, but the coyotes were so loud that we knew they were very close to the house. Coyote yowls are spine-chillingly creepy.

This morning, I found a message from EJ. He works 2nd shift and arrives home around 3:30 am. He had written: “I saw a coyote on the way home…1/4 mile west of here so you may want to delay opening the coop up until 7-ish, maybe later.” I didn’t open the coop until after 7:30 am, when it was quite light outside, just to be safe.

Yesterday I continued my first steps into the World of No ‘Poo. “No ‘poo” means “no shampoo.” I used my homemade Happiness Shampoo for the first time. Unhappily, my hair felt oily all day but I remembered reading something about a “detox phase” when a person stops using commercial shampoos so I went to the Internet for more information. I read this from Thankyourbody.com :

If you are new to natural shampooing or no ‘poo then you have to be prepared for a detox phase. Commercial shampoos strip your hair and scalp of their natural oils, which is why most people feel the need to shampoo daily. As your hair is stripped of oils the body signals for the scalp to produce more. In other words: The harsher the shampoo the more oils your body produces. As you wean yourself from commercial shampoos it will take time for your body to re-balance itself and stop producing so much oil. In the meantime you can expect extra grease and general “gross” hair until your body balances back out. This can take anywhere from 2 – 9 weeks. (Yep… this is not for the faint of heart.) The good news is that once your body finds its balance you can expect more manageable hair with only “shampooing” every couple of days (or even only once or twice a week.)

Sigh. It is indeed going to take strength and endurance for me to get through the detox phase because I despise the feeling of oily hair. If I can make it through, I expect to have happier, healthier hair, but it’s going to get rough. I did read one article that suggested “weaning” yourself off commercial shampoos gradually by slowly switching over to natural shampoo. I will try that. Today I used my “regular” shampoo, but I will try to use it less and the natural shampoo more often.

I further read that many of the DIY shampoo recipes call for castile soap, which although better for hair than the harsh chemicals of commercial shampoos, raises the PH balance of hair higher than is natural so it’s better to use PH balanced recipes. My Happiness Shampoo uses castile soap, but I found one or two PH balanced recipes to try. I need to get a few ingredients that I do not yet have. One ingredient I need is coconut milk. That presents a slight problem–not for me, but for EJ. He wants to use DIY shampoo but he is allergic to coconut. I’m trying to find a recipe that doesn’t use any coconut. So far I am unsuccessful, but I have only been searching for one day.

I also looked into essential oils yesterday. I keep reading that Young Living essential oils are the best quality. I have a friend who sells Young Living oils, and I’d really like to buy from her. It would benefit us both. But to quote the coyotes I heard last night, “Ai yi yi!” The oils are expensive and I can’t afford them right now.

There are a lot of things I’d like to learn, but the problem with new hobbies is that most of them are expensive–at least initially–and we are not wealthy. Most of the time I start learning a new skill because I want to cut expenses. When I look into how to make it, I then see how much more healthy and/or fun it is to make the item than to buy it.

I think it would be fun to learn about beekeeping so we can have our own honey. I don’t want to invest in a lot of expensive equipment when I don’t know if I can successfully overcome my nervousness around bees. In late 2019, EJ talked to a co-worker who raised bees and made his own honey. The guy wanted more land for hives and he and EJ sort of made a handshake agreement that the guy could put some of his hives on our land. This could be of mutual benefit. He could maybe give us some of his honey in exchange for using our land and/or he could teach us how to do it. The best way to learn something is from people already doing it. They know the best supplies and techniques. He wanted to start in the Spring of 2020, but the Lockdowns last year prevented it. EJ no longer works with the guy. I hope they can reconnect.

There is so much information that learning a new skill can be very overwhelming at first, so I start to gradually expand my knowledge little by little. For example, years ago I began to grow my own herbs. It was overwhelming at first until I decided to learn how to grow, cultivate, use, and store one herb at a time. I learn one and then I move on to learning another. I will learn about beauty products in the same way–starting out with shampoo and then maybe learning about things like “shower bombs.” I also wouldn’t mind eventually making my own cleaning products, but first I will learn about shampoo. I have started a notebook that I am filling with articles and recipes about shampoo that I can easily reference to teach myself.

I’d like to buy the best quality of everything I try to learn, but I have to work within my budget, and when starting out to learn a new skill, I don’t even know if it will be something I can learn or want to continue to do, so I’d rather not buy the most expensive supplies at the beginning. For example, I am teaching myself Tunisia Crochet, which is a new form of crocheting that requires a completely different type of hook than regular crocheting. There are some really awesome, high-quality Tunisia crochet hooks available, but I just bought myself cheaper sets to learn on. If Tunisia crochet is something I want to continue pursuing, I may replace my practice hooks with better ones later on.

I can’t afford Young Living essential oils at this time, so I will get lesser quality to learn on. Yesterday I looked online for essential oil at our local store. I ended up also looking online and bought a few oils/supplies from an on-line site that sells oils that seems to maybe be better quality than the local store but less expensive than Young Living.

I did have some fun looking at the online items from the local store. It sold individual oils as well as sets. The boxed sets combined oils that were used to help with specific things such as breathing, calmness, focus, or energy. The box listed the oils in the set. For example, the “Just Breathe” set included tea tree, peppermint, and eucalypus oils. But the oils for some of the other sets were labeled with things like “Deep Thoughts” or “Dreamcatcher.” I laughed to EJ, “I get where oils like peppermint and lavender come from, but where do they get “Deep Thought” or “Dreamcatcher” oil? Do they siphon off the deep thoughts of people who overthink? Do they have a way to drain and bottle dreams? What if the oils from dreams go bad and give people nightmares?” We laughed about that for a bit. Who says learning can’t be fun?