On returning from my trip to Minnesota, I found that my lovely wife had finished the last of our store-bought shampoo and had taken it upon herself to make some more from scratch.
The original recipe is from the David Suzuki foundation website (direct link to the PDF here -- other homemade haircare recipes are also included), with a few small modifications. Here you go:
Make a "tea" using the following amounts of water and dried herbs:
2 c water (use distilled if you live somewhere with chemically-tasting water)
2 tbsp peppermint
2 tbsp lavender
2 tbsp nettle
2 tbsp rosemary
Once it's cooled, throw away the solids. Add:
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp witch hazel
~ 1 tbsp xanthan gum
10 drops cedarwood essential oil
10 drops tea tree essential oil
Xanthan gum isn't in the orginal recipe, but we added it after using the original shampoo for a week and not liking it's "liquid"-ness. It's hard to incorporate this completely (think: adding flour to soup stock), but it's possible if you use a whisk attachment on an immersion blender.
Lastly, stir in:
1/2 c vegetable glycerin
1/4 c decyl glucoside
The decyl glucoside isn't in the original recipe, but the shampoo won't lather without it and we weren't liking this aspect. Of all the lathering agents (surfactants), decyl glucoside seems the tamest. (In the natural product world, the most common surfactant -- sodium laureth sulfate -- seems to be regarded as one of the world's great evils.)
Anyway, this shampoo is pretty great. This recipe makes enough to fill a 500 mL (~16 oz) bottle -- reused from a previous shampoo bottle, of course.
A side bonus is that after battling winter dry scalp for a decade or two -- and consuming Head & Shoulders, T-Gel, and countless other products without great results -- my head is healthier than it's been since I was about five. Good job, Erin!
Oh, and you don't need conditioner with this, largely because you haven't stripped the hell out of your hair's natural oils. The aforementioned website recommends a rinse that you use about once per week.
Ingredients:
2 cups water
~ 1/2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
~ 1/2 tbsp of xanthan gum
Again, the xanthan gum is our addition, simply because we like it to be somewhat more gel-like.
When we set out on the Year of Less, we didn't anticipate making our own shampoo and conditioner -- these items were certainly not on our list of things to avoid. That said, we love these products, they were easy to make, and they cost less than even the cheapest store-bought items. We did have to buy some products we didn't have (essential oils, decyl glucoside, glycerin, witch hazel, etc.), but as future entries will show, these will be important essentials in our household from now on -- for a variety of reasons.
The original recipe is from the David Suzuki foundation website (direct link to the PDF here -- other homemade haircare recipes are also included), with a few small modifications. Here you go:
Make a "tea" using the following amounts of water and dried herbs:
2 c water (use distilled if you live somewhere with chemically-tasting water)
2 tbsp peppermint
2 tbsp lavender
2 tbsp nettle
2 tbsp rosemary
Once it's cooled, throw away the solids. Add:
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp witch hazel
~ 1 tbsp xanthan gum
10 drops cedarwood essential oil
10 drops tea tree essential oil
Xanthan gum isn't in the orginal recipe, but we added it after using the original shampoo for a week and not liking it's "liquid"-ness. It's hard to incorporate this completely (think: adding flour to soup stock), but it's possible if you use a whisk attachment on an immersion blender.
Lastly, stir in:
1/2 c vegetable glycerin
1/4 c decyl glucoside
The decyl glucoside isn't in the original recipe, but the shampoo won't lather without it and we weren't liking this aspect. Of all the lathering agents (surfactants), decyl glucoside seems the tamest. (In the natural product world, the most common surfactant -- sodium laureth sulfate -- seems to be regarded as one of the world's great evils.)
Anyway, this shampoo is pretty great. This recipe makes enough to fill a 500 mL (~16 oz) bottle -- reused from a previous shampoo bottle, of course.
A side bonus is that after battling winter dry scalp for a decade or two -- and consuming Head & Shoulders, T-Gel, and countless other products without great results -- my head is healthier than it's been since I was about five. Good job, Erin!
Oh, and you don't need conditioner with this, largely because you haven't stripped the hell out of your hair's natural oils. The aforementioned website recommends a rinse that you use about once per week.
Ingredients:
2 cups water
~ 1/2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
~ 1/2 tbsp of xanthan gum
Again, the xanthan gum is our addition, simply because we like it to be somewhat more gel-like.
When we set out on the Year of Less, we didn't anticipate making our own shampoo and conditioner -- these items were certainly not on our list of things to avoid. That said, we love these products, they were easy to make, and they cost less than even the cheapest store-bought items. We did have to buy some products we didn't have (essential oils, decyl glucoside, glycerin, witch hazel, etc.), but as future entries will show, these will be important essentials in our household from now on -- for a variety of reasons.
the witch hazel. is it a tincture or is it just the ground witch hazel bark?
ReplyDeleteWe used tincture -- hope it works out for you! I'm actually making a new batch this afternoon.
ReplyDeleteLove this! Do you know how long this shampoo lasts?
ReplyDeleteNot sure how it lasts -- each batch we've made has been used up within 2 months or so...
ReplyDeletehello!i want to know how do you mix (or with what) the tensioactive with the rest. I´ve tried but it gets very foamy. thanks
ReplyDeleteYep, it will get foamy. I've done it two ways. I've just gently stirred it in and it doesn't foam much. And, I've whisked it in. Like you said, it gets foamy but then I've left it for a while and waited to pour it in a bottle until it's died down.
ReplyDeleteCould you use castille soap as the surfactant?
ReplyDeleteYes - castille soap works equally as well!
Delete