No Poo Challenge

After spending way too much time on the Good Guide trying to find a cheap-yet-ecofriendly shampoo, I finally gave up and decided to try the No-Poo crowd. No-Poo is an eco-minded trend that suggests that washing your hair with a baking soda rinse, followed by an apple cider vinegar "conditioner" is actually healthier than any commercial shampoo. According to the various no-poo sites, their rinse idea doesn't strip off natural oils, leaving hair clean yet soft and shiny

While I have not yet made the jump to full no-poo, I have used it as an alternate between commercial washes.

I mixed up the rinses in two old plastic shampoo bottles to this formula:

16oz water to 2 Tbsp baking soda
16oz water to 2 Tbsp vinegar (it calls for apple cider vinegar, but some Googling told me that white works just as well)

I squirted it on my hair after wetting it down. I let it sit for a bit while I wash the rest of me, then rinse and swap to the vinegar mixture.The smell of the vinegar was decent but luckily didn't linger long. My hair felt clean, and it was definitely easier than Dr. Bronner's. It was so much easier to brush than with pure soap, too! The only downside is that the water is cold if I mix it up in advance, and that my hair seemed a bit drier since I swapped, making my monthly honey mask a necessity. Thus far, I have not experienced any dullness or crunchiness in my hair, which I've read is a side effect when the water to mixture ratio is off. I may start using it two times before switching now that I'm not doing as much grubby work during the week.

Bottom line: it works for me and my oily hair, but not as well as commercial as far as moisture.

Edit: I found this site, Beyond Shampoo, which is a great resource for the new to "no poo". If you have detailed questions, check it out!

Removing Stains With Borax

As part of Earth Month, I decided to try out alternative ways of removing stains from laundry.  One of the options I’d seen referenced online was using borax as a bleach substitute.  Some people suggest using borax in your laundry to remove general stains, but it can also be used as the pre-treatment.


I have a tan coat, which was probably a bad idea of seeing how easily I put stains on my clothing.  In order to try cleaning this coat, I stuck it in a clean bucket with ¼ cups borax and about enough cold water to cover the coat.  Then I added about ½ gal of boiling water.  This way, I got the water hot enough to dissolve the borax without having to use hot water from the tap.  The problem with using tap water for small tasks is that the water must travel all the way from the heater, which might be okay if your tap is right near the heater, but considering mine is very far away, I would have to waste a lot of cold water before I got enough hot water.  


I left the coat to soak overnight.  After that, I washed it with my laundry as usual.The results were quite nice.  The stains and I was paying attention to faded dramatically, and several old stains continued to fade.  I would recommend this sort of pre-treatment if you are trying to treat a small number of items.  For general stain removal, add ¼ cup of borax to the laundry in the barrel with the clothing.


While I do support oxygenated cleaners, like Oxy-clean, borax is more useful as a general cleaning tool beyond just a stain remover.  If you happen to have Oxy-clean on hand, feel free to use it.  But if you happen to be out, borax  makes a great substitute.

On Ditching my Iron

As anyone who knows me (or the stereotypical college student) knows, ironing is not exactly a high priority. I only iron when I absolutely must.

So, when I found this awesome tip on removing wrinkles with a spray bottle, I have to admit my curiosity was piqued. Basically, you spray the garment with a very fine water mist, relaxing the fabric, and then let it hang to air-dry. It's like my cousin's steam iron, but uses only a spray bottle.

I realize that it won't work well where the air is very damp, but at least it lets those of us with low relative humidity remove wrinkles sans electricity!

Homemade Cleansers Link

You may or may not remember my paen to homemade, eco-friendly cleansers a few weeks back, but if you do, I've finally found a good e-link with recipes. Squidoo's Environmentally Friendly Homemade Cleaners site has a lot of recipes which I recognize from Zen Cleansing and from my own personal experience.

It started with a good friend who is establishing her first apartment as we type. She was intrigued by the GoodGuide ratings on shampoo, conditioner, and more, so we checked up on Windex. It had decent environmental and moderate society, but scored 4.5. Why?

The health score was 1. My friend was shocked, but honestly, I wasn't. Cleaners are atrocious in the chemicals they use just to do standard jobs. Luckily, my friend is considering the vinegar mixture for her windows, and her questions about furniture polish are what led me to Squidoo.

I still think the Zen Cleansing book is a more complete manual to cleaning without commercial products, but give it a try with the above cleansers if you're unsure about the results.

Happy cleaning!

Drain clean

I must be in a domestic mood lately. I've been cleaning a lot! The more I clean, the more I realize that I use much fewer chemicals than I bet a lot of people do.

There's a pair of sinks in our house bathroom which have been running slow. I swear, the guys who owned this place before us had no idea what to do with it. Mom pulled out a disgusting hairball from each, then I went to work to clean the pipes.

A lot of people use commercial drain cleaners on their pipes. But why? I use baking soda and vinegar. The foaming action scrubs the pipe and deodorizes the whole thing. If you remember your basic chemistry, when baking soda and vinegar react, you're left with basically salt water, which is fine to send down into the sewer, so it's much nicer than any of the harsher cleaners on the water supply.

Start by pouring as much baking soda as you can down the pipe. Then pour vinegar after it. You're going to need a LOT of vinegar, but that's why it's sold in gallon bottles. It's such a useful cleaner for just about everything (like windows!) that it never hurts to get extra. The baking soda will foam like crazy (remember those cool paper mache volcanoes from Elementary school?) and drain down the sink. Repeat a few times until the water runs nicely down the pipes.

Huzzah! Clean pipes and no harmful aftereffects, as well as buying and manufacturing less. 

Window Shine

More green cleaning thoughts! It's beautiful summer in my part of the globe, and I live in a house with not one, but THREE sliding glass doors and many large windows. They're gorgeous and let in tons of natural sunlight, saving a lot of electricity in lights. They also get rather dirty. I could use a commercial glass cleaner, but the chemicals involved aren't exactly the greatest for the environment or the people manufacturing them. Still, who wants dirty windows?

One trick that my parents taught me when I was young was how to clean windows with vinegar and either a rag or newspaper. Both work, but with different downsides: the newspaper is very absorbent and doesn't leave lint behind, but rags don't stain your hands black. Pick your poison on that front.

Make a basic cleaner in a recycled squirt bottle by combining 16 oz. water with about 1/4 c. vinegar. This amount is adjustable, but you want to be certain the water smells like vinegar. Spray your windows and clean as normal. The vinegar makes sure that the water doesn't leave smears behind on the windows. It works on house and car windows.

And there you have it - a cleanser which is cheap, green (since vinegar won't pollute water or air), and effective.

Shoe Shine

I'm a huge fan of white shoes. I think they're great, and forget the people who say no white after Labor Day. I live in a sunny part of the country, and I will wear white when white looks good.

The problem with white shoes, however, is that they are white. White shows every particle of dust, dirt, and smudge which comes within half a mile of them. I pulled out a pair of my white heels for 4th of July a few weeks ago and realized they were a mess. I've been reading a book about cleaning with basic, natural products ("Zen Cleansing" by De Jong, a review will be forthcoming). De Jong recommends using baking soda to get shoe scuffs off floors. I started wondering if it could also get floor scuffs off shoes.

You can see the results! The top one is representative of the shoes pre-cleaning, and the bottom, post scrub. All I did was dip a damp cloth in baking soda and polish in a circular motion. Then I wiped them to get off the excess baking soda. The shoes look like new, except for a few places where the covering itself had torn.

This is great news if you're thrift-shopping and need to give your purchases a little TLC, or if you have some shoes which need cleaning. Water cleaning didn't do much when I tried it, but baking soda is slightly abrasive, so it does a nice job in taking out dirt without much effort on my part.

The best part is that baking soda is non-toxic and naturally occurring, so it won't pollute the wastewater. It's also a deodorizer, so it refreshes the sent, too. It gives the shoes some extra use-life by not making them look old and worn.

Got favorite clothing refreshing tips? Let me know in the comments.