Remember last summer when I embarked on a crusade to both eliminate the number of showers I took a week along with replacing shampoo with baking soda?
Well, I’ve pretty much decided, in the last month or so, that it isn’t working for me. Partly because since November, I’ve decided not to shave my legs or armpits, which means that no matter how much deodorant I use, I’m stinky (actually, in truth, I’m a stinker even with cleanly shaven pits). There’s nothing like snuggling up to the hubby and eliciting an “eeww” from him as I reach my arm around him and then a comment about whether I use deodorant or not. This coming from someone with chronic halitosis, no less (which I accept for what it is, and kiss anyway!).
Not only that, I also started getting sores on my head when I started using baking soda, and since I know they were never a problem when I used shampoo, I can only assume that the baking soda is irritating my scalp in a way that shampoo doesn’t. So, I’m shampooing again. And showering every other day. Long hot showers, because it’s bloody cold in our apartment – a word to the wise: bottom floor apts are cold, don’t waste your electricity bill on heat that rises to the neighbors!
I’m sharing shampoo with Nate; his pick after I informed him of parabens and laureth whatevers: ShiKai (they don’t test on non-human animals, yay!). The sores seem to be abating. I smell nicer, ish.
I’d been giving myself a hard time about giving up the baking soda; I so wanted to be the frugalista (or as one of my friends refers to me as – “the frugal genius” which I might point out I’m work in progress on that front, and don’t feel in any way particularly genius). But, as always, I’m really just experimenting with what it means to meet tightwadness with living well, and in this case, I just wasn’t feeling the living well part of the deal.
So…I’m shampooing.
2 Comments
March 4, 2009 at 10:43 am
It is not uncommon to get irritation from baking soda. I tried using baking soda instead of deodorant. Got a massive red rash under my arms. So I tried cutting it with cornstarch. Didn’t help with the rash and reduced the effectiveness of the de-stink. So I’m back to deodorant while I consider other options. -sigh-
March 6, 2009 at 5:55 am
I don’t know if you have a Walgreens around you but I just bought some shampoo Essencia (or something like that) that is a friendly shampoo. The even bigger bonus: it had a tag on it’s neck to make it free after mail in rebate. So the best of both worlds! I know I’ve seen another brand there (Organix, I believe) that was also the same case but they didn’t have that this trip. Of course they will only allow one per household for the rebate but one is better than none or $7 out of pocket. For saving money on some toiletry items I like to use Walgreens free after rebate or register rewards programs, often I get paid to buy items like toothpaste and brushes, sometimes shampoo.