Ecological hair care

So,

I've started to grow my hair way longer than before. It's already long enough that I wear part of it in a pony-tail, now. This, of course, means I've started using conditioner along with the shampoo, 'cause the hair got all dry and crappy when I didn't. Now, today, we ran out of conditioner (I took the last of it), and I complained to my mother, who said, "Go with vinegar, that's what we used to do when I was a child, back before we had conditioner". I just thought, "What the heezy, R U krazy or somethin'?"

But then I went to check it in the Net, and slowly, I came to realize shampoo is a chemical wastedump of crappy chemicals that Zapata Oil can't sell to the military because they're useless, and so they use them in shampoo instead. Conditioner is better, but, you know, it's still a chemical wastedump.


So, according to the "No-Poo" method (Meaning no shampoo, so don't get any funny ideas... ), shampoo is crap and should be exchanged for one or many of the following;

x Baking soda, to use a little in the hair as substitute for shampoo, though only once a week or so. Should in that case be followed with;
x Apple-cider vinegar, dilluted in water, as some sort of conditioner.

Another tips for better hair would be to heat about half a cup full of olive oil, and then comb it into your hair, put on a bathing cap, and let it be for about ten-fifteen minutes before you use the above-mentioned two to clean your hair in the shower. This, too, would help, or so rumor has it, the hair get back its natural oils and minerals, which shampoo has, literally, effed up by it's use.

Also, another existing recipe seems to be to use whipped whole eggs, mixed with some honey and/or lemon in an empty shampoo bottle, maybe fill it up with hot water as well. That one, too, seems very tempting for me to try out, though I'll skip the honey in that case, 'cause I do NOT want honey in my hair.

So, anyway, I'm no expert on this, but I'm researching a bit on the Net, and I plan to start doing that in september when I move from home. I just wondered if anyone here has any tips or experience with skipping shampoo, and using these kinds of things, or the like, to clean your hair?


Edit for linky:

Here's a thread on a mommy forum (yeah, yeah, I know I have nothing to do there, but the tips are SOLID!), a long one loaded with varying tips about hair care, and reports of the effects of said tips on the hair. Most of them say baking soda and apple-cider vinegar are the ways to go:
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=108474

Do post if you have any links for recipes and the like for shampoos, or other natural surrogates for detergents.

Wow what an interesting thread. I have heard that beer is also good for conditioning the hair and making it shiny...that is when used on the hair and not drunk! lol.

Another good 'mommy' tip for head lice removal without chemicals is to smother dry hair is a white conditioner (any cheapo one will do) and use a lice comb to remove head lice and their eggs. This needs to be repeated every 3 days until all the lice and eggs are gone. The conditioner stuns the lice for up to 20 minutes so make sure you dispose of the ones you remove effectively because they will eventually start crawling again. I like this method of removal because it does no harm to the kids, smells a hell of a lot better than most nit sprays and is cheap. Oh, and their hair is soft and shiny after the treatment.