good hair days

My hair is stubborn. It doesn't like being told what to do... a bit like the rest of me really. It is fine and doesn't like being washed more than about once every 5 days or it gets too greasy. On top of that I get psoriasis on my scalp and on my hands which means that finding shampoo that suits my hair, hands and scalp has always been a mission. Sods law usually means each time I find something that works it ceases to be available or they 'improve' the recipe after about a year or two and I'm back to trying to find something else again.

In the UK I rarely used conditioner, my hair just didn't need it. But under the harsher sun here I've found I've needed it, which just adds to the trial and error process.

So when once again I was finding my scalp was not happy with the latest combination of products I decided to try something new. Well, something old really. I'd heard of homemade rosemary hair rinses before but it was only after reading Wendyl Nissen's book The Home Companion lately that I decided to give it a go - the basic instructions are here, the book recipe is a bit different, 2/3rds boiling water and after 24hrs add 1/3rd cider vinegar. I haven't been bothering to store it in the fridge (partly because there is seldom space in there!) the bottom of my wardrobe seems to be cool and dark enough.

So far so good - if I use the rinse plus shampoo once a week and just the rinse on wet hair after a shower once extra between washes my hair is soft, clean and shiny and more importantly my scalp is happy! With summer coming on it remains to be seen whether I'll still need to condition my hair occassionally too. A handy bonus is that I use far less water when washing my hair without conditioning it as it used to take me ages to rinse it all out properly - given how often we have water shortages around here this is definitely a Good Thing.

Due to our rosemary bush not being very big I've been using a mixture of rosemary and our more plentiful lavender, and with the latest batch threw in a sprig of mint too after reading this, if there is one thing we have loads of in our garden it is mint!


I'm enjoying finding another ways to use the produce in our garden. Okay so I'm hardly a big consumer of hair products so it isn't going to make a big difference financially nor in terms of packaging etc (especially as I buy eco-friendly products anyway!), but it is another of those small steps. If it encourages others to have a go then great, that is why I've blogged about it! But for me it is part of a longer journey towards reducing my footprint on the earth and working towards a more sustainable future.

ps whilst I wash/wet my hair in the shower I use the rinse at the sink, put the plug in and pour it over my head and use a cup to repeat this until all my hair and scalp is rinsed.