Archives

by Grant

Less “Poo” For A Better “Do”

The documentary “Affluenza”, a conversation with my brother, and finally an article from NPR convinced me to try something you might find disgusting. I went several days without shampooing my hair.

Actually, I went two weeks or fourteen full days without shampooing. I did wash my hair everyday. I just didn’t wash with shampoo, I used water and more than normal scrubbing and rinsing.

Come to find out shampoo is good at cleaning, but not good at moisturizing. Shampoo strips your hair of essential oils which keep your hair healthy and prevents it from drying out.

Here’s my old routine, shampoo for cleaning, conditioner to counter the bad effects of shampoo, then hairspray to make my unhealthy dried out hair stay in place.

My new routine is to shampoo once a week and wash with water the other six days. No need for conditioner or hairspray, because my hair stays hydrated and managable. That’s two things shampoo can’t do.

If your going to try to use less “poo”, be patient. Your body is over producing oils to compensate for the continuous stripping of oil in your hair by the shampoo. So give your hair some time to slow down the oil production, get into a routine, and your hair will get used to more peaceful times.

In conclusion, reducing shampoo use totally eliminates the need for two other products (conditioner and hairspray) and leaves your hair healthier. I know my hair has never been healthier.

by Grant

The Garage Purge: It’s Our Stuff Or Our Cars

Several years and a house ago, my family and I had a two car garage. In that garage was a wall to wall heap of our stuff. We had boxes, bags, shelving units, and other stuff that couldn’t fit in or on any bag or shelf. It just sat there and sat there.

Once in a while someone would venture in to add to the heap or to find something in it. The finding almost always failed, “I know I have a utility knife in here somewhere”. I could only find flat head screwdrivers when I was looking for Philips or visa-versa.

The result was, our second biggest investments sat out in the weather, our stuff sat unused in a cool dry place and I repurchased anything I couldn’t find. How pathetic. We must be insane, because the garage in our current house is also filled to the brim with stuff. What are we thinking?

Anyway, there have been times when the garage did get cleaned and purged of the stuff. Those were some of the happiest days of my life, no really. All of a sudden, I could find things the things I really wanted and that had a practical purpose. I let go of most of those books “I want to read someday”, school papers, the vintage microwave “just in case we need it”. So many excuses. So many emotions and fears of letting go. We made all that investment in “stuff” we hadn’t used in years.

This is a wake up call to all you with attics, garages, basements, spare rooms, and storage units filled with stuff to “purge baby purge”. I for one will be performing a Spring Purge this coming weekend.

A few words of advice, don’t buy stuff if you don’t really need it, if it’s garbage to you it’s a treasure to someone else, and if it’s hard to let go , then “take a picture it will last longer”. Less let’s you live more.