Update: Honey Challenge & Sorta No 'Poo

So have you been wondering how I have been doing on the CrunchyBetty Honey Challenge and with the Sorta No ‘Poo? Yes? Well I will fill you in on it right now!  As you may know the Honey Challenge officially ended a couple of weeks ago, but, nevertheless, I have continued to use honey to wash my face everyday since the challenge began on July 18. I am very glad that I continued too, because the skin on my face has improved immensely. Oh, it is not perfect by any means, but it is much better. I have less dry spots and it seems smoother. What breakouts I do have seem to disappear quicker too. I am quite pleased!

The Sorta No ‘Poo is going well too. I really like the way my hair feels and looks. Amazingly my hair seems to be darker. This is an after effect I have heard of from the No ‘Poo method, but I had not expected it using Sorta No ‘Poo. I do feel like I need to wash my hair everyday with this method, but I may be wrong. I will start to experiment with this over the next couple of weeks. I also think that if you let the suds sit on your head for a bit more of the oils are removed. Anyway, I will report back when I have more evidence.

The only issue I have with both of these methods is that I have to run to the kitchen or the fridge before taking a shower. You know it is just not my first thought that I need to run to the kitchen before my shower. To combat this, I have now put some honey in a small jar and I keep it in the bathroom. I am not sure what company might think of this, but it makes my life easier and I don’t have that much company anyway.

That does not fix my issue with needing to keep my shampoo and conditioner in the fridge, however. Truthfully, I have been keeping them on the side of the the tub, but I really should refrigerate them. I thought that one of these little fridges would be a good solution:

However, Rodney thinks that it is a bit odd and that it would be strange in the bathroom. I have to admit I would never buy one new but if I found one at a garage sale I would pick one up. If someone is snoopy enough to look in it, what would it matter? Everything in it would be edible. They could have a snack!

Honey Challenge: Day 8

Just a small update: I have noticed that I do not have any dry spots on my face anymore. It also feels much smoother. I still have some breakouts though. So, I would guess if your skin is less problematic than mine you would have a faster improvement. 

Honey Challenge: Day 7

It has been a very trying week here. Between the sadness of Walters' passing, the frustration of trying to reunite a lost dog to its owner* and the anger at having our garage broken into it has been a really crummy week. I did, however, wash my face with honey everyday and continued to wash my hair the Sorta No 'Poo way. I can not say that my skin is fabulous, but I can say it is not worse and I will keep washing it with honey for at least one more week. Tomorrow on Crunchy Betty there will be some new ideas to add to the honey wash, so I expect one of those might be what I need to be really dazzled. 

My hair, however, is a different story. I am quite please with how my hair is doing. I have washed it everyday with the Sorta No 'Poo method and it feels good. This week I am going to try skipping a few days and only water rinsing on the skipped days. This is what I do most of the time, since I wear my hair up a lot in the summer. It has been so beastly hot though I just felt I had to wash it, for I felt sticky all over. Ick. 

This coming week I will continue both experiments and I will let you know how it goes. I have several events happening this week though, so I expect I might not be back here until Friday. Have a happy week!

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*Just after the Fourth of July a flyer went around about a lost dog. I kept the flyer on my refrigerator for a week and then I recycled it. Well, after Walter passed I was looking at animals at the Humane Society and I saw the dog listed there! But the flyer was gone. I tried all sorts of avenues, but I was never able to find his owners. In the end I made a flyer of my own and posted it in hopes that the owners will see it. 

Honey Challenge: Day 1

Okay, I started the Crunchy Betty honey challenge a bit early and started washing my face with honey last night. I mean how could I resist after watching her cute video on how to do it? So far I have not noticed anything amazing happening to my face. It does feel clean, but it also has a sort of tacky-ness to it, which I do not find appealing. It could, however, be the fact that it is super hot and humid in Minnesota right now. (There is a predicted heat index of 117 degrees today! Crazy!) So I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep going with it. 

Crunchy Betty has all sorts of interesting homemade ideas on her site. As it happens I have started using one of her other ideas today too. There is a way of washing your hair called no 'poo. For those of you that don't know about it, it consists of washing your hair with a mix of baking soda and water and then rinsing with diluted apple cider vinegar. I have tried this method and found that if my hair was really oily it was fine, but I could not do it several days in a row. My very fine Scandinavian-type hair would become a Medusa-like mess with bits floating and flying about my face. And the texture was really not good, not good at all. 

I do still use the no 'poo method occasionally, but it is not a good everyday plan for me. Then Crunchy Betty put up this post. If you don't want to go read it, the idea is to use a mixture of castile soap and coconut milk to wash your hair with and then to rinse with the same diluted apple cider vinegar. Castile soap on its own does not lather very much, but with the addition of some magical property in coconut milk it makes lathers like crazy!  I know this because I tried it this morning. I bought some Dr. Bonner's Castile Soap on Saturday and yesterday, I made some homemade coconut milk. That meant that this morning I was ready to try Crunchy Betty's Sorta 'Poo method. And I have to say it worked very well. My hair feels very soft and clean. 

I was a bit worried about how much castile soap was suggested per use. One tablespoon a day seamed like a lot of soap to be using. I found, however, that I was able to use half of a that and I still had plenty of suds and lather. She does say that short-haired people could probably use about half of her daily mixture. I do not have short hair, but it may be because my hair is so fine. Also, if you are worried about the smell of the vinegar, don't be. Once your hair is dry the scent is gone. I did see an idea in the comments of the Crunchy Betty post to add orange peal to apple cider vinegar and then to dilute it after it had sat for a bit. I think I might try that too. 

Anyway, I am going to continue on with both the honey challenge and the Sorta No 'Poo for the next two weeks. I will let you know how it goes. 

Crunchy Betty Honey Challenge.

I am going to take Crunchy Betty's challenge to wash my face with raw honey for the next two weeks. It should be interesting. You would think that as a woman over 40 my face would not be still be breaking out, but it does. It is also both oily and dry and the same time. How is that possible? Hopefully this will help me. I will let you know!