A slight disadvantage to “going natural or organic” is finding beauty products that are good for the earth that also work for your skin/hair type. There are many online discussion groups about natural/organic shampoos. It is amazing! I have spent a whole year and probably hundreds of dollars on different brands of organic shampoos and conditioners. I have yet to find something that really works for my long, thick hair. For the record, my favorite so far has been the line of hair products by David Babaii for WildAid. You can order them from Drugstore.com. This is a line that was developed by Kate Hudson and her hairstylist and touts itself as cruelty free, all natural and eco friendly. I am not 100% sure about the validity of the eco friendly claims but I have been really happy with the product. Smells great, gets my hair clean and keeps it soft without weighing it down. It is a bit expensive, around $12-$14 per bottle, so I try to supplement it with another product line . The other shampoo and conditioner that I have been getting into is Burt’s Bees. I like the Color Keeper and More Moisture lines. They both have Tea Tree Oil which can be really drying, so I tend to use a lot of conditioner. At $6.79 per bottle at our local grocery/co-op, this is a good deal. I tend to notice that the Burt’s Bees stuff starts to weigh my hair down on day two or three and this is why I have to keep switching.
As I wrote earlier, I have spent lots of money trying out different shampoos and conditioners this year. When Bryan and I decided to make the switch to organic/natural products in Feb 2008, we walked into Bloomingfoods (our local grocery/co-op) to find some shampoos to try. I spent about 20 minutes reading the backs of labels and comparing claims and prices. Bryan systematically looked at the bottles and found one that he wanted to try. He took it home and loved it. He was set. Check organic shampoo off of the list. Bryan had found the One! Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to buy it again because he has spent the past year using up all of the bottles of rejected shampoo that I have bought. He has almost worked his way through all of the bottles and we think that he will get to buy bottle number two any day now.
I think that it is important to note that the road to finding organic and natural products that work for you and your family can be littered with good intentions. (Though, I am sure that none of us would actually litter, we would dutifully recycle the bottle that said beauty product came in!) I know that I tend to try new products, find that they do not work for me and then keep the partially used bottle in my bathroom for years, hoping that I will somehow find a use for it. By the way, using leftover conditioner as leg shaving cream is a great trick that I learned from my grandmother Josephine and my friend Jamison’s grandmother Lou. It really works and it is super cheap!
So, what to do with leftover beauty products that still had lots of love to give? Recycle them, of course. This is where a great little idea that I had comes into play. I will write about it tomorrow. It is called a Recycled Beauty Party!
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