Well I broke down and used shampoo last night.

I made it about two months, but I’m not sure I can keep up with no poo for a few reasons:

• My last couple of washes seemed like they didn’t get my hair completely clean. I’d look OK in the front, but greasy enough in the back that I’d have to immediately pull my hair up like I have to on dirty hair days.
• My baking soda wasn’t lathering enough and to be honest, with hard water I don’t think I have enough patience to boil water for 10-20 minutes and wait for it to cool every time I want to shower. It’s just too much hassle for me. I also accidentally spilled the vinegar solution once and it went all over the bathroom floor. That doesn’t happen with shampoo. (Yeah, I know there are solutions for that, but I’m just saying.)
• As a result of not washing with boiled water, the grey matter and flakes piling up in my comb and brushes were pretty gross. And I don’t really like brushing my hair with all this crap in it so I’ve been washing my brushes every few days. I thought the flakes were just me but….
• I actually convinced Kay to try out no-poo for a couple weeks and on the weekend I noticed he also had little white flakes in his hair. He hadn’t washed it for about a week aside from water. He’s never had flakes before now or complained of dry scalp, so I am chalking this up to no-poo and our hard water. (Although Kay still disagrees that our water is hard!)

So with Kay’s flakes convincing me maybe no-poo isn’t the best for us, I washed my hair (twice!) with some sulfate free shampoo last night, conditioned it, and man it looks and feels great today!

I still want to keep shampooing to a minimum because I really value not having to shampoo every night and I think it is better for my scalp, but I am concerned if I leave the no-poo method what I will do about SLS free shampoo. The SLS-free shampoo I have now was a gift from Sweden and apparently it’s not even on the market anymore. Probably out of my budget anyway.

But no-poo was about to become an issue too. They do not sell boxes of baking soda in the grocery here and I was on my last box that my brother brought over for Christmas in 2010. Buying baking soda from the English bookstore is obscenely expensive and there’s no way I’m using little 1tsp sachets of baking soda from the grocery.

So we’ll see what happens. Kay and I decided not to buy anymore super cheap shampoo but we are not sure what to buy since we are mostly limited to brands like Loreal, Pantene, etc in the grocery store.

Any suggestions? I am heading to the US next month so I could stockpile for awhile.