Ever since Joy’s baking soda in the bathroom makes an eco-friendly shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste post, I’ve been curious about replacing shampoo with baking soda. Traditional shampoos contain sulfates and other ingredients that can be harmful to our health as well as the environment. But the bigger issue, for me, was the number of plastic bottles I was tossing in the recycling bin. Those take energy to produce and recycle.

For several months I used dry baking soda in the shower. I’d leave some in a little dish, scoop some out, form it into a paste with the shower water, then work it into my hair. It cleaned my hair really well, but it was somewhat of a mess dealing with powder in the shower. I eventually gave up this practice and started using a sulfate-free shampoo from Trader Joe’s.

After about half a year of using this shampoo, a strange thing happened: it suddenly stopped working. It simply refused to clean my hair. I’d wash it with the shampoo, dry my hair, and it would end up looking worse than before I’d shampooed. Back to the baking soda. And this time, I stumbled upon the perfect solution that was less messy and used less baking soda (as if this weren’t cheap enough!).

I simply mix 1 tablespoon of baking soda with 8 oz. of water. I happened to have a bottle just the right size to keep it in. In the shower, I pour about one fourth of the mixture on my head and massage it through. This is strange—of course it doesn’t lather at all, so it feels like you are doing nothing. I rinse my head, then follow with a conditioner. Afterwards, my hair is squeaky clean!

Have you experimented with using baking soda in place of a shampoo? What’s your technique? How does it work for you?