It has been a while since I updated about my shampoo-free experiment. Three months have passed since I stopped using shampoo, and some of you might have wondered how it's going. (If you are new to the blog, you can read my previous posts about it HERE, or click the words "shampoo-free" in the label cloud on the right.)

I'm still washing with baking soda and rinsing with vinegar every five, sometimes six, days. I really like how it treats my hair, and feel good about what I'm putting on my skin. (Not sure what the big deal is about the chemicals you put on your skin? Read this article!)

So, here is how I rate being shampoo-free:

**How my hair feels; manageability: A+
(My hair is soft and shiny, and easily managed. Granted, I put my hair up every day, but I'm talking about when it is loose at home.)

**Greasiness/"ick" factor between washings: A
(This has improved over time. I went through a stage when my hair got oilier than I cared for, but it has balanced out now.)

**General hair health: A+
(My hair has never been healthier. Very few split ends, no dandruff, less hair loss after washings. Perhaps it will even get thicker over time.)

**Time spent caring for hair: B
(It does take longer to wash with baking soda instead of shampoo. But then again, since I don't do it daily, I'm probably saving time in the long run.)

**Cost: A+
(I haven't even calculated the difference in cost. Baking soda and vinegar cost pennies per use, plus I no longer have to use leave-in conditioners, detanglers, or split-end menders. I know, I'm such a cheapskate! ;o)

When my hubby saw that my hair did not rot and fall out, he decided to try it for himself. He has been shampoo-free for a couple weeks now, and just rinses his hair out every day. He reports that his hair is much easier to brush into place, which surprised us both because it can be rather unruly!

As for me, folks, I no longer consider this an experiment. I am officially shampoo-free! I know you were wanting to know that. ;o)

Yesterday the whole family went to town to do the weekly shopping and other errands. It's always fun to be in Xela, since we usually get to eat out somewhere and take all the children into the stores. (Boy, do we draw attention when all eight of us are together! :o)

Some of the children were needing some clothing, so we decided to stop in a few paca tiendas to see what they had. Pacas are huge bundles of used clothing that are brought down from the U.S., so what a paca tienda is, essentially, is a good ol', hometown THRIFT STORE!

I {heart} thrift stores.

The Lord allowed us to find some really nice clothes! I found two skirts, one for each of my big girls, and a long slip for my longest girl,two dressy pants for my growing boy, as well as a nice pair of black jeans. (The dark brown pants below are very nice corduroy. Always in season, here in the mountains!)


We also happened across that double-breasted sport coat (above), which fits Joseph perfectly, and is machine-washable. Also picked up some really nice Dockers for my hubby. (not pictured)


I paid about $15 for all of it. Thank you, Lord, for thrift stores!

Look at this nifty old tea kettle my girls found! Someone had left it in the creek behind our house, and they fished it out and brought it home.


We cleaned it up and heated it on the stove to dry it thoroughly. The enamel is chipped in several places and there are dents in it, but doesn't it have character? I thought it would look cute in the space on top of my kitchen cabinets.

Our Guatemalan friends will think we are crazy when they see an old tea kettle decorating my kitchen.

We get fresh cream from the dairy farm down the road, and our favorite thing to make with it is fresh butter. Recently, they gave us a really good price on a big bucket of cream, so we whipped up several pounds of butter and stocked our freezer! This is how we make it:



A good old-fashioned butter churn would be more picturesque, but since we don't have one we use my stand mixer. We put the cream into the bowl and beat at high speed for a few minutes. How much time it takes depends on how heavy the cream is. This time, it only took a minute or two, but with "milkier" cream, it can take up to fifteen minutes.


Once the butter fat has separated from the buttermilk (it will sound sloshy in the mixer or churn), we stop the mixer and pour off the liquid, patting the butter to squeeze out drops of buttermilk. (We save all the buttermilk for making pancakes or biscuits.) At this point, Caroline Ingalls would rinse the butter in cold water. This makes it keep longer. But we have a freezer, so we skip that part...

Add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. salt to the butter (depending on how much you have) and mix again. Then press the butter into a mould of some sort. We line the mould with plastic wrap with which to wrap the butter up for storage.


Since this was not for immediate consumption, it went into a paper bag and then to the freezer.

What's great about making our own butter:

** Our children know how butter is made.

** We know what's in it, that the cream was fresh and hormone-free.

** It is as salted (or un-salted) as we want it.

** It's fun to make our own!

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ Addendum ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Making Butter From Your Cream

You may have never come across such a good deal on cream as we did. However, I'm sure you have seen great deals on certain grocery items, especially produce and perishables, that were hard to pass up. Well, don't pass them up! If it is something that you can use, then buy it and "make butter".

Those bananas that are half-black and sacked up for quick sale at a fraction of the regular price? Buy them, take them home and peel them. Freeze them in plastic containers or Ziploc bags in portions that are just right for your favorite Banana Nut Bread recipe. "Make butter"!

Found marked-down yogurt a little past its freshness date? It's likely still good, but needs to be consumed quickly, or frozen... Hmmm, frozen yogurt pops, anyone? "Make butter"!

Onions and peppers can be chopped and stored in the freezer, ready for your recipes. Broccoli and other veggies a little past their prime may not be good for eating raw, but are still fine for steaming and putting into soups. "Make butter"!

They don't just put items on sale for the freshness date, but also for other reasons, such as overstocking the item. If it is something that your family will use, then stock up! Change up your weekly menu a bit to accommodate the goodies you found, and freeze what you do not use.

..."Make butter"!

Lately I've been playing around with the idea of making laundry soap, for several reasons. One, it would be something less harsh to wash my family's clothing with. Two, it's cheaper than the laundry soap we can buy here. And three, it just looked like fun! So when we ran out of powdered laundry soap yesterday, well, necessity provoked some invention.

Most of the recipes I found online called for a bar of plain soap, borax, and washing soda. I did find one recipe without borax, and that was good because I can't buy borax here.

So I shredded a bar of soap into a saucepan and melted it with a little water. Then I poured that into a bucket with 2.5 gallons of hot water.

Then stirred in a cup of washing soda. Actually, all I could find was a laundry treatment powder made of 1/2 sodium carbonate (which is the "washing soda") and 1/2 sodium percarbonate, thinking that it wouldn't make much difference. Would it?

The recipe said to set it aside to cool. Which I did. And the stuff just kept foaming up... and UP...

...and UP SOME MORE.

Perhaps that sodium percarbonate made it do that, because none of the recipes I saw said anything about the soap foaming up.

Anyhow, what we ended up with was a nice liquid gel laundry soap with a foamy head. We stir it up, then use 1/2 cup of it per load, or a little more for particularly dirty loads. It works great, and smells so fresh!