May 30, 2007
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Shampoo Recipe
Ozarque sent me a copy of Mother Earth News with a recipe in it for shampoo. I had all the ingredients on hand, so I whipped up a batch, and it is a very good shampoo. It leaves the hair soft and clean.
Here’s the recipe:
10 ounces water
1-2 ounces liquid soap (I get mine from Brambleberry — you can also get it at the health food store)
1 teaspoon glycerin or almond oil (I used almond oil)
20-35 drops essential oilFirst boil up some herbs in the water (I used peppermint from my garden) and make a nice strong infusion — that is to say, tea. Mix everything up. I used honey fragrance oil (from Sweetcakes) and went around all day smelling like mint and honey, but you could go with aromatherapy blends or use lavender for its antibacterial properties.
Why would you want to make your own shampoo? Shampoo is cheap. It seems hardly worth your time.
Well, for one thing, cheap shampoo is cheap because it is made from water and small amounts of cheap petroleum byproducts. It is then packaged in bottles made from petroleum and shipped — using lots of fuel to transport that water and packaging — to your store.
For another, it is cheaper yet to make your own. This is sort of like baking. If you never bake, and have to go out and buy butter, flour, sugars, oats, vanilla, cinnamon, nuts, raisins, and eggs before you can make any cookies, then you would find it cheaper to buy cookies from the girl scouts. If you have the stuff on hand, it is cheaper to bake your own. For me, grabbing the herbs from my garden and the tiny quantities of active ingredients from my crafts cupboard makes this excellent shampoo a bargain.
But just as having the basic ingredients for baking on hand makes it possible to bake lots of things, having some personal care ingredients on hand means you can make your own lip balm, hand or body lotion, foot scrub, bubble bath, and so forth any old time you need some. And the prices on those things can be staggering.
Making your own also means that you can give it the scent you want, or none at all. You can use herbs that have some healthful properties, if you are knowledgeable about that. If you are going to use collections of exotic herbs, you might want to get some ph paper to make sure that your shampoo ends up slightly acidic, since that is best for the resilience of your hair. I wouldn’t worry about any herb traditionally used for hair care — mint, lavender, rosemary, chamomile, sage.
Just in case you are now filled with a burning desire to make this shampoo, I must warn you not to make more than this at one time. Even though you boil the water and herbs, there are always chances of bacteria growth if you leave plant matter sitting around a long time. So make it and use it.
This has made me think about how my mother was telling me the other day that my brother doesn’t trust anything homemade. Fresh eggs, homebrewed ale, stuff like that makes him nervous. He prefers to have things that have been made in a factory.
He wasn’t there at the time, so we can only speculate on his reasoning. Perhaps he thinks that the government regulates commercial goods so that they are guaranteed to be safe. Or maybe he figures there are chemists checking everything out and making sure that the setting in which the stuff is made is clean and wholesome.
A very little research will disabuse a person of that notion.
Comments (7)
Hard to imagine the homemade stuff really works. If your shampoo isn’t highly foamy (which it won’t be without detergent) it’s hard to imagine it works. If your hairdryer isn’t fantastically loud then it’s not doing anything.
External indicators.
LOL. The hearty lathering occurs when the surfactants get mixed up with air, instead of doing what they are supposed to do, which is grabbing dirt and oil and carrying them off. Shampoo maufacturers use things like Ammonium Laureth Sulfate or Sodium Laureth Sulfate because they make lots of foam very cheaply, and make people think they are doing something. Like the noise of the hair dryer.
Here’s the official word from Salonweb: “Foaming occurs when surfactant molecules gather around air instead of oil. The result is millions of tiny bubbles. Obviously, the air bubbles are using the surfactants that should be removing dirt and oil. We have all seen shampoo advertisements showing happy, beautiful people taking showers with their heads heaped high with mounds of lather. These images have taught the public to associate lather with cleansing ability.
The truth is, lots of foamy lather only means too much shampoo was used. Excess foam equals waste. Sebum and other oils quickly destroy foam. Ideally, the head should have just enough lather to lubricate the scalp and hair. This will help your fingers massage the shampoo more effectively into the hair. “
LOL chanthaboune.
I used to make shampoo from soapwort and rosemary. Just a simple infusion. I think it would have worked better with a little castille soap added to the mix. But then you have to rinse with vinegar to get that soapy residue out. Do you find?
TYC: The cucumbers are planted in the top. The sides of the palettes have screen attached to the bottom, if that makes sense, to hold the dirt, and they are planted in those caches. I really don’t know if it is going to work. It looked good in the magazine.
I used to have to be very careful not to have any herb-flower fragrances in my shampoo (or in anything else that lingered on my person) because when I went outside it would immediately draw bees. Now, given what’s been happening with the bees, I’d be willing to use those fragrances flagrantly, just to see if I could manage to attract a few.
As for your other comment, I’m not sure why our garden is ahead of yours. Are you sure it is? All we have is a spring harvest, about normal for this time of year, I’d say. Although we did have a nasty late freeze which damaged our lilacs and hydrangeas. No, or very little, blooms.
I do start my greens in a growrack/greenhouse. That may be why the lettuce and chard were ready. We also had a nice harvest of spinach. It’s all gone now, though, and too hot to bother with trying to get another batch.
I love making my own goodies – I have a book on how to make “astringent,” and face masks, etc. Let me know if you want the title. The recipe you posted is a good recipe for shampoo.
I learn something every day. I didn’t know that about the foaming – I can now stop wasting my shampoo. (Stopping the waste would be a good idea ‘cos it actually is a fairly expensive shampoo from Bodyshop (make their own with no animal testing). It is however the best range of hair products I have ever come across and I haven’t used anything else for about 3 or 4 years.