Baking soda hair wash

Ah, Friday.

I'm going to start off by talking about the weather - I'm sorry, I can't help it, it's a big part of determining my mood, whether I like it or not. Everyone (the weather-telling folk) kept saying the weather this weekend was going to be perfect fall weather. After being butt-to- office-chair for most of the day today, I decided to go see for myself. I took a walk in the cobbled streets around my work, and yup, pretty darn good. It was the kind of day that makes you forget bad weather even exists. I walked slow, as if I was in one of those slow-motion montages where everything is nostalgic and tinted lomo-rifique, cause that's just what I do sometimes when the weather is this way.

Shockoe bottom

Found this corner at the Fountain Bookstore, and had to resist strong urges to sit in the sun, read a book, and forget the world.

Before I get to the real reason I wanted to write this post in the first place, which is baking soda, there is something else I need to address, which is, the Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator. Naturally.

Maybe I am slow on the uptake on this one, but I just found this out and thought this should be shared. Do you watch Community? It’s a show, on NBC, and it’s good. Ken and I used to watch it every week, but we stopped having cable and DVR, so not so much anymore. Donald Glover (no relation to Danny Glover) is an actor on that show, and on one of the first episodes, he did a short rap that had to do with la biblioteca, which husband and I thought was the bee’s knees and repeated to each other ad naseum. Come to find, he has been releasing hip-hop albums online since 2008 under the alias Childish Gambino. I rifled through some of his stuff and don't have too strong of an opinion either way - it's not great, it's not terrible. But that’s beside the point. On being questioned about the origin of his alias, Glover explained that he got the name from a website that generates Wu-Tang Clan member names.

When I heard this, all of a sudden it seemed very important that I find out what my alias could and should be were I to recognize myself as a Wu-Tang Clan member. I first entered in my married name and got, ‘Pesty Hunter’. Huh? No thanks. Does that sound like PESKY hunter to you? Yes. So I renounced my new last name for a hot minute and typed in maiden name and got ‘X-cessive Overlord’. Okay, better. Then I tried husband’s name, both in the short and long versions, and got ‘Sarkastik’ Hunter and ‘Tuff Dominator’. Take your pick, baby.

If I were to take any sort of meaning from this whatsoever, it would be that both of us got rap versions of our names that are hunter-like and overlord-like. Which means that if we were to make a rap group and use this incredibly helpful tool, we would be Pesty and Sarkastik Hunter! Or X-cessive Overlord and Tuff Dominator. Booyakah.

Here is the site if you want to check it out for yourself.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk baking soda. Baking soda is a sodium bicarbonate and it helps regulate pH balance. It neutralizes acids and breaks down proteins. What that means for us is that it is good for almost anything that has to do with cleaning, treating and deodorizing. Some examples of its uses are:

• use as toothpaste or add to toothpaste for extra boost
  
• use as face scrub, exfoliant, or shampoo
  
• treat insect bites and itchy skin, or as an antacid
• baking
  
• clean pots, counters, fruit, oven, floors, shower curtain
• fresh carpet, stuffed animals, sponges
  
• etc.
  

See how the back of the box has both instructions on how to clean pots and digest it? So versatile!

Basically, baking soda is awesome.

I'm sure you knew a lot of this already, but what I didn't know and had not tried before was washing my hair with it. Apparently, a baking soda hair wash will clean out the excess product, remove impurities, and super clean your hair. Shampoo does wash your hair but it sometimes leaves extra residue of chemicals in your hair, some of which are trying to do good, but some of which are unnecessary. Washing your hair with baking soda once in a while is like a cleanse, to get it back down to basics and working better when you do use product in your hair. Plus, this method allows you to wash your hair less often, if you're into that.

I tried it for the first time tonight ("I'm sorry, but I'm going to be busy washing my hair!") and I am a big fan of this. I took the box of baking soda to the shower (i.e. yelled out to husband to bring it to me) and poured some into the palm of my hand. Then I mixed water into it and applied it to my hair, from the scalp to the tips. I waited a few minutes and then washed it out with warm water. It feels slightly gritty, but it's not too hard to wash out. I didn't use a conditioner so that I could get the full experience of a clean wash. When I got out of the shower, my hair felt and sounded squeaky clean, different than usual shower hair. When I was drying the hair, my hair was getting tangled really easily because it wasn't smooth from the shampoo product. But once my hair was dry, it was super soft...! I could actually feel that there was no product in my hair. I had to make sure to brush it out because it was all tangly (which doesn't usually happen after a shampoo and conditioner), and it was a different kind of softness than what you get from a shampoo-conditioner, but it felt great and liked knowing that it was a cleanse for my hair. It was also more obedient to hair stylings. I think I will be doing this regularly from now on, once or twice a week, to mix it up and get my clean on.

Let me know what you think if you try it, and everyone else, get it on this weekend by enjoying the glorious weather!

Rusty's hair doesn't stay on him long enough for him to do a baking soda wash.