Another try at water-only bathing

OK, we have the great big thread on going pooless: https://permies.com/t/6347 I've read it all, and participated a little the first time I tried this. But it's too long to reread and a lot of the stuff doesn't apply. Like, I'm not sure that washing with baking soda and rinsing with vinegar really counts, though I guess it has to be more eco-friendly at least.

Anyway, I'm trying this again. I last used soap on 13 August. My natural inclination (or training, whatever) is to use plain castile bar soap and a mild shampoo every morning. What I'm doing instead is using hot water (only warm if you like it really hot), and massaging my scalp in the shower while it dumps onto my head, trying to get any amount of dirt-laden sebum to leave that I can. When I'm done with that, I have an almost desperate need to get soap to cut the gunk of my fingers, but I'm fighting that and just use a terry washcloth instead. Then I scrub with that cloth. I pay a lot of attention to my armpits and my crotch, but give a quick scrub to everything that's easy to reach.

So, just over a week in, here are my results:

- I stink. Not badly, but not good. Maybe there are bacteria that will reestablish if I don't kill them off with soap, but it takes a couple of weeks. I've heard that (with no technical backdrop) so I'm trying. I think I can make it another week at least to give them a chance. Worse than my pits stinking is my hair. There is a miasma of staleness surrounding my head and stuck to my pillow. That last thing is the single biggest hurdle -- it's interrupting my ability to concentrate at work!

- I feel dirty. My face doesn't feel clean after I scrub. There's a residue in spots like my underarms where moving parts touch. My eyes feel a little gunky -- weird since I don't soap my eyes! (lol) And of course, most of all, my hair is like a sheep's wool, thick with sebum. And it's hard to brush into a tolerable state after which it's like I'm wearing a hard-hat made of wax and butter. All of these feelings seem like something I might just need to get used to, so I'm sticking with it for now.

- I'm using a lot more heated water. A *lot* more. My showers are at least twice as long as they are with a quick soaping. Maybe more than double! I work and I scrub and I massage and I pinch-pull, and since I never get clean, it's just a matter of eventually giving up and calling it done.

- My bath towel and my pillowcase stink. I'll need to change them more often (like, once a week or more instead of every 2-4 weeks) which will mean more laundry. (Unless these conditions change, which some people claim happens.)

- My wife is put off. She supports the experiment but wants to cuddle less.

- I'm spending something like an hour a day while sitting at my desk combing grease out of my hair. Yesterday, I started collecting instead of discarding it. It's equal measures gross and cool (see images below).

So, this isn't feeling very promising right now but I want to give it a fair try. I'm interested to hear any suggestions y'all might have for navigating this trial that stem from your own personal journeys.

I applaud your scientific spirit! (this thread did not go in the direction I expected it to!!)

Alas, my experiments with no-poo (with or without vinegar/baking soda) always were similar to this. I've done a few good long stints and everyone said "just hang in a little longer and your hair will stop making oil", and that just never happened. I felt like some proverbial dirty old greaseball and it never got better. Worse, my scalp didn't get ultra-moisturized from all this sebum-- it got horribly irritated (which to be fair happens to me anytime I don't wash my hair for more than about 4 days, no matter whether I use products or not). And I hear you about the amount of hot water used. Then there is the circular problem of how using that much hot water makes my skin wicked dry, so I need to put on oil or something (which attracts more dirt that needs to get washed off).

I wonder if some people are just better suited to only washing with water, or if it's something environmental. I know some folks do really well with only water, and good for them, but it is apparently not for me.

(that's a great comb you got there, btw)

My experience is that showering or bathing can actually feed the bacteria, increase sweating, and so on. Bacteria need moisture to thrive and so I find that the more I get wet, the more smell. (Well, we expect this of a wet dog!) It also tangles the hair.

For sweat, something to do is to use a cloth and wipe it off instead of washing it off. I find this more effective, especially compared with water alone, as that encourages more microbes, but still use underarm soap now and again which as we know works well. But not very much of it.

Another thing—people in days of old combed a lot more. It might have been the Tudor Monastery or perhaps Edwardian farm series where I saw it—people cleaned their hair by combing and there is a saying about a hundred strokes of the comb that refers to this practice of cleaning by combing. That is what I do. And oil does collect if not combed.

I haven't used soap or shampoo in years.  I think I must be closing in on 20 years;  when I initially made the no poo switch it took about two months and I had long hair and it was gross.  I wore a bandana constantly.  So all I can say is, it might take a while!  

I tried the no poo thing and might revisit it again in the future but for now I decided to just reduce how often I shower and use shampoo. Did find out that used coffee grounds instead of soap works wounders as a body wash for me. And soap on my face causes pimples and over time it stopped producing so much grease. But my hair just couldn't adapt! I tried for 3 months and my friends have officially dubbed me a crazy hippie from that stint. I think there's a way but I don't have the freedom right now to have gross feeling/looking hair with work and stuff right now.

I've lost track of how many times I have tried no-poo. For me, it always ends up being a no-go. So, I've settled on just washing it 'on demand', shooting for at least a week in between shampoos. Sometimes that works, but I also have livestock, and do almost all of the dirty jobs on our little farm (like crawling under the sink that had been leaking far longer than we knew, and had creepy-crawlies, mildew, much water damage and it stunk - in order to rip out & replace all the plumbing, incoming and outgoing, because my husband physically can't),  so there are definitely times when no-poo isn't happening, and neither are extended waits between. Anywho, once again, I've recently given up on it.

But. I've been making & using my own cleanser that's ph balanced (aka just a bit acidic) for me. It lathers beautifully, and though it isn't perfect, it's pretty close, compared to most of what's out there, on the store shelves.

This is what I'm using:
1C unscented liquid castile soap
¼C aloe vera gel
1T jojoba, avocado, castor, or argan oil
1T honey
2T bottle lemon juice
10 drops rosemary eo
5drops lavender eo
5drops clary sage (opt)
I put it all in a squeeze bottle (saved from a condiment), shake well, and use sparingly.

The same morning that I created this thread, I ordered this ayurvedic powdered "shampoo": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081Y1FKRQ and tried it yesterday, not really expecting much. It is every bit as effective as industrial shampoo at getting gunk out of my hair -- enough so that I'm annoyed at having reset the sebum clock and ruining my experiment. But it also replaces the stale miasma that was following my head around with a miasma of warming curry which is just as weird to deal with. I haven't decided what to do next.

The powder is much less convenient than having a bottle of shampoo, but I do like running just ground plant powder down the drain instead of synthetic chemicals. It also apparently burns your eyes, which wasn't a problem for me because the read the cautions and closed them, but it must be bad because people have given the product 1-star reviews over it.

I did resort to using corn starch dry "shampoo" a couple times while transitioning.  Shake it on scalp, massage in, comb out well (don't let it get wet!).  It certainly mopped up the extra grease in my case.  

About once a year or so I still do a vinegar rinse, to counter the hard water we have here.  I know to use it when my dry hair doesn't look clean and bouncy after my water wash.  The first time this happened, post- no-poo, I actually tried to shampoo my hair and it got worse:  it was still limp/greasy looking but very frizzy and dry at the ends.  

I've done this for maybe 10 years now.
BUT my skin and hair are very dry...hair is thick and frizzy with humidity but dry enough I use a little jojoba after shower.

Steve tried and because his skin and hair are oilier gave up fairly quickly.

I love a good scrub with a luffa and got a scrubber thingy for my scalp...I have always liked to use a dog brush (I don't share) for my hair and head...hard headed I guess🙄

Sometimes I use a tbs. of baking soda dissolved in warm water on my hair in the shower and then rinse it out...fewer tangles and maybe less frizz.

I'm interested in the ayuredic 'shampoo' ingredients?

Judith Browning wrote:I'm interested in the ayuredic 'shampoo' ingredients?

The listing says:

Ingredients
Amla Reetha Shikakai Methidana Powder

Which I think are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllanthus_emblica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapindus_mukorossi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegalia_rugata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenugreek

If you’re interested in other less scented natural shampoo options, soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) is a kind commonly planted in gardens. Though Plants for a Future says they are zones 4+ so maybe they don’t grow near you. They seem like a hardy plant to me at least, and maybe around rivers (their natural habitat) the temperature is moderated enough by the water that they would grow. Yucca filamentosa is also zone 4 (PFAF) and contains abundant saponins, although they’re not common enough here for me to have tried.

I’d also think maybe snowberries would work? Those could grow in your zone potentially.

Some people use regular bar soap instead of a specific shampoo, which can be made at home from grease and lye or potash.

Judith Browning wrote: a scrubber thingy for my scalp...I have always liked to use a dog brush (I don't share) for my hair and head...hard headed I guess🙄

Is the scrubber an actual dog brush or is it something else?  Intrigued!

There's apparently a whole big market for diverse scalp-scrubbers. I've only ever used my fingertips.

my daughter has something very much like the top-left item in the picture above, it's soft silicone and she swears by it.

(my dog also has a somewhat larger and much stiffer rubber bristled currycomb type brush that looks almost exactly the same-- just missing the little handle thingie)

G Freden wrote:

Judith Browning wrote: a scrubber thingy for my scalp...I have always liked to use a dog brush (I don't share) for my hair and head...hard headed I guess🙄

Is the scrubber an actual dog brush or is it something else?  Intrigued!

the scrubber for the shower is a rubbery thing but the dog brush is a dog brush with the rubber coated wires for brushing my hair and scalp.
It might be a cat brush...we get the same one for our long haired cat.
I tried finding a brush I liked in the hair dept. and ended up with this for quality and price in the pet dept.
I don't know what the soft side of the brush is for....

Your pic looks like soap scum, probably the castile soap. Are you using Dr. B? It's alkaline, very bad for skin and hair. I can't believe I didn't figure it out for years. And it leaves tons of soap scum, likely due to the incompatibility with human hair and skin. I didn't realize what was going on until I washed a pair of silk long underwear with Dr. B baby soap...they disintegrated over several washings.

Try stripping off the soap scum first. Then brew a sage or similar herb infusion. Try using the infusion.

It could also be your water. Try using filtered water as a test. Then you'll know. If you boil the water, lots of minerals will go to the bottom, so you can use the water on top. You could also set up a gravity sand filter

I use a wooden comb. Works really well. Haven't used soap or shampoo for 20 years and everything is really good.

Definitely not a soap constituent since it increases over time as I get farther and farther from having used soap.

I'm not going to preboil my wash-water if that's what you're suggesting.

I'm pretty much on the verge of giving up yet again. I suspect my path is to find the least damaging -- or ideally, most beneficial, substance and then use as little as possible.