Shoot. Running behind today – bit off more than I can chew. So, without further ado, the third of four Tuesdays Outside the Box: Today featuring things to do with Borax and handy ways to fix oily, unruly, or otherwise unsavory hair. Yay!
You know the drill by now, right?
If you have a blog post that fits into these categories (using borax or taking care of your hair), you can add them at the end – so EVERYONE can enjoy your genius. If you don’t have a blog, leave a handy-dandy comment at the bottom with your favorite ways to handle either of these things.
I’m going to start backward today, because I’m jazzed about the first “outside” the box idea and I’ve been waiting to share this with you guys for months. It just never seemed to be the right time.
SO.
Tuesdays Outside the Box: Fix That Hair!
My outside the box thinking for this one is, well, REALLY outside the box.
But it works! And, my dears, if you are no ‘poo and looking for a fun treatment, THIS is the one.
It.
Is.
Yes, believe it or not, the super grain, quinoa, actually makes a very mild shampoo. AND it is literally packed full of protein, which should help strengthen your hair and bring it a beautiful shine.
You see, the outer casing of quinoa actually contains natural saponins – much like soap nuts – and if you’ve ever cooked quinoa (if you haven’t, you must … SOON) you know that you should rinse it off first to help wash away those saponins. Otherwise, you end up with slightly funky-tasting quinoa.
But don’t let that rinse water go to waste! Save it, instead, to use on your hair.
Check out what the quinoa water looks like while rinsing/soaking/shaking (you don’t have to shake – I just did it for effect, to show you the sudsy bubbles).
How to use it: In the shower, pour the quinoa rinse water over your hair and massage in lightly. Let it sit for 3-5 minutes and then rinse away. If you’re no ‘poo, use this just before you use your baking soda mixture. If you DO use shampoo, you can use this in between shampooing and conditioning. OR, add a little bit to your shampoo each time you take a shower for a protein-packed hair treatment every time!
AND, if you’ve never cooked quinoa, use this recipe for parmesan quinoa cakes to get you started. You will NOT regret it. It’s my new favorite go-to dish when I’m lost for dinner ideas. Seriously yum.
Tuesdays Outside the Box: What to Do With Borax?
Instead of taking a traditional turn with borax here (like, say, cleaning … which is what it’s GREAT for), I’ve opted to share one of the least crunchy things I’ll probably ever share.
And it has very little practical use.
BUT IT IS SO MUCH FUN YOU WILL CRY RAINBOW TEARS OF FRISKY KITTEN HAPPINESS.
If you grew up in the ’90s – or if you had a kid in the ’90s – you will absolutely, without a doubt remember these three letters: GAK.
Gak was a ridiculously expensive mushy, plasticky slime that kids begged for. Do do what with? Who knows. It was just … weird.
Well, guess what? You can make GAK at home using four easy ingredients: Glue, borax, food coloring – which is optional, and water!
This would make for a fantastic science project for your older kids, and if you’d like to use it that way, I recommend studying up on the scientific reasoning behind why borax turns glue into GAK here at Steve Spangler Science.
In a nutshell, the borax and glue produce a polymer. That’s as sciencey as we’re going to get here.
I’ve made this several times over the last 8 months. Because it’s fun. So remember when I said it had no practical purpose? I lied! It’s a great stress reliever to play with, and it makes you giggle like a little baby.
How to Make Homemade GAK:
You will need these things:
- Plain old glue
- Borax
- Water
- A bowl and a cup and a spoon
- Food coloring (optional)
First, pour some glue in your bowl. I like to use about half a bottle of the small glue. (I bought mine at Staples for $0.99 a bottle, so this is a really, really inexpensive little project.)
Next, drop in food coloring and stir until you reach your desired color.
Now, in a small glass, add about 1/2 tsp (you don’t have to be precise) of borax to about 1/2 c. warm water and stir until dissolved.
Here’s the fun part! VERY slowly, start pouring your borax water into your glue. Once it starts to stick a bit (which will be immediately), you can just hold the ball of glue in your hand and pour a little bit of water while you mush it around. It is best to mix this with your hands.
Once you reach a thick consistency, where the GAK is only sticking to itself and no longer clinging desperately to your hands, you’re done!
No. This does not stain your hands. No. This is not particularly messy, because it “cleans itself up,” but I would recommend trying to keep it away from carpet.
This IS a fun way to clean glue off of hard surfaces
For science sake, I poured some glue on different parts of my counter top. I cleaned up BOTH wet and dry glue with a borax-water mixture, and it was so. much. fun. Way more fun than digging in with your elbow grease to get glue off of counters.
I also, though, sacrificed a towel to science, pouring glue on an old ratty towel to see if I could get it all to clump up and peel off using the borax water. This did NOT work. I laid that towel to rest last night, so let’s have a moment of silence.
Do NOT try to clean glue off of carpets using borax. The end.
Now It’s Your Turn! Share Your Outside the Box Ideas Here!
Don’t forget to leave your comment with ideas on either how to fix unruly hair in uncommon ways – or ways that you LOVE to use borax.
And if you have a blog post regarding either of those things, right here is where you link it up and share your awesomeness:
LINK TO YOUR BLOG POST AND BRILLIANT IDEAS HERE:
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HAPPEN
The kids and I made the Gak today using *glitter glue* and they absolutely LOVE it! I remembered making this as a kid and it is STILL as fun today! Thanks for the fun post!
I used the Quinoa water and it worked great! It left my hair feeling very similar to the egg wash. I definately like this and will probably rotate it with my egg ‘poo.
I am 2 years late on this blog, but have a horrible time with shampoos. I live in a hot climate country.
My scalp which is exactly the same as my face and body, excretes oil on a 24 hour basis. It also sweats up a storm every day.
I have to wash it to keep the bacteria down and the stench away.
I am allergic to sulfates and have been slowly discovering which sulfate free shampoos really are completely sulfate free. In doing this I also learned that it is my eating that makes the difference to my hair.
Your head is dead. Completely dead. Think of a baby pine cone, it comes out closed up and shiny. after the air and age gets to it, the pod slowly opens and that is the same as our hair strands. We forget that an autopsy after we die on our hair can tell if we had a child in that hair life. Medications we had taken, if we were ill, if we smoked or drank a lot. Hair is an amazing memory stick. It remembers what we have been doing internally.
All we can do on the external is cover it to avoid too much damage. The skin on the other hand can get pimples, dry skin and flaking, and overproduction of sebum due to hormonal influences. I love to clean my scalp and feel the salty sweat and excess oils removed.
I have irish fizz hair. I found a great solution before I go out in winter. I will wash my hair and then I will olive oil it and wrap it for 20 minutes. I will then just wash the scalp and allow the shampoo to naturally slide down the hair shaft removing just the amount of oil I want removed. The oil coats the strands and allows shine when dried.
May I also suggest you investigate a vitamin d deficiency. Sweaty scalp etc can be a symptom. Cheers.
About to try the quinoa rinse. Yesterday I made a fenugreek mask which left the mids to tips of my hair all greasy feeling and looking :/ I like using oils or aloe gel to tame the frizzies, which I rarely have since I’m no poo. I have heard that fabric softener diluted in water and used in a spray bottle is a great detangler/softener for hair. Have no intention of using this on myself, but so many people swear by it.
Ok so this was my first experience ever with quinoa, and I’m in love! I put the rinse water in a jar to use later and made the recipe you suggested and it’s great! My boys are VERY picky, my 5 yr old almost refuses to eat meat so this is a great substitute and he loved them. Win, win, win! Thank you!
The kids and I made the Gak today using *glitter glue* and they absolutely LOVE it! I remembered making this as a kid and it is STILL as fun today! Thanks for the fun post 🙂
I make Gak in my preschool classroom all the time. Vinegar gets it out of clothes and hair ( soak and scrape)! And avoid the carpet, but if some gets in it, let it dry completely and try to flick it out with a cheap plastic comb or rubber scraper.
Does anybody have any helpful ideas on how to help my dry, unruly, hair become soft and managable??
I used the Quinoa water and it worked great! It left my hair feeling very similar to the egg wash. I definately like this and will probably rotate it with my egg ‘poo.
Just a note, Borax is very toxic to cats, so use caution if spreading it around your carpets and whatnot.
Borax will deter most critters that you don’t want around in your attic, laundry room or garden shed. Just throw it around like a shaman. If you want to control pests behind your stove or dishwasher it is the best. It is safe to use around pets, inexpensive and very effective. It will keep away bugs, mice, snakes, spiders and any other creepy critters.
Well I have a weird one that involves hair care and borax! When my Granny was in her early twenties, she got really sick with a really high fever. (Her doctor didn’t know what it was called, but called it a “tropical fever” that she’d probably picked up at work from one of the soldiers returning home from the war.) Anyway, during this mystery sickness, almost all of her hair fell out and when it wasn’t growing back her doctor told her to wash her hair with 20 mule team borax. She did, and it worked great! Weird, huh?!? I haven’t tried it myself but a few years ago, granny’s hair started getting really thin so she started using borax again and she her hair grew back again. It was funny though, because she’d had gray hair for decades but the hair that grew back was brown, just like when she was younger.
Definitely going to try the quinoa patties followed by a quinoa-water hair wash/rinse! Love both those ideas!
I don’t know how uncommon or “out of the box” this idea is, but I have tamed a lot of frizziness in my hair by using a small amount of coconut oil. I put it in when my hair is wet and when I blow dry it, it sort of melts throughout my hair. At the beginning, it was really easy to put too much in and then my hair looks greasy so I had to be careful to only use a little, little bit of it.
I’ve used borax in the past to remedy a flea problem. I filled an empty grated cheese container with the borax & sprinkled it on all the carpets &/or rugs in our home, let sit 4-6 hours (left it while I went to work) & then vacuum up! If I understand it correctly, it de-hydrates the lil buggers! The favorite best natural way is still Diatomaceous Earth but borax works!
I just used a mix of salt and baking soda for fleas, does the same thing, it dehydrates them and they die, eggs and all. worked great!
Ohhhhhhh! I love Quinoa. I am going to try this.
I get to do both of these things at once………I use borax water to shampoo my hair! 🙂 I have been no ‘poo for 6 years! I dissolve borax in water and let the excess borax settle. Drain the water off and wash my hair with that water. I use 1/4 tsp of citric acid as a rinse afterwards. FYI……..I tried BS for my hair but it got way to dry. This works much better for me.
Love your blog.
If you don’t mind, how much Borax to water do you use?
Sorry I didn’t catch this sooner……..I have a plastic bottle in my shower that hold about 1/2 gallon of water. I put about an inch of borax in the bottom of that and shake it up, let it settle then pour off about a quart or so and use that to wash my hair. Keep using the big bottle until the borax is mostly used up then add more. Perpetual shampoo! 🙂 Hope that helps.
Thanks so much!
I remember as a kid in school we did that Gak project on science day, that was awesome. The quinoa shampoo is a good idea. I want to try it now but be careful what quinoa you buy, I know some of it comes pre-rinsed. I’m a professional cook and we never rinse the quinoa at work, although I’m not too sure about the stuff you buy at the store. Guess that means I need to start cooking more quinoa, less meat…
Oh, this is perfect! I love quinoa, and I was already planning a meal using quinoa for tomorrow. Now I can save the rinse water instead of dumping it on the lawn!
I’m definitely going to be investigating everyone’s hair posts and ideas in the comments.
I recently bought Borax to make my own laundry soap and then read that it’s actually considered a poison in Europe! I’ve googled about it and read several articles about using/not using Borax; any thoughts anyone?
Yep. I should’ve shared this in the post, because it’s always a topic that comes up whenever I write about borax, but this should help a little … http://crunchybetty.com/getting-to-the-bottom-of-borax-is-it-safe-or-not
Thanks for the link and all the time you’ve put in to unraveling the confusing info on Borax! It seems you can find as many pro articles as con articles and the research is hard to track down. I think I’ll still wait till my 18 month old grows up a little before making gak (she still has a tendency to put all sorts of things in her mouth) but will use my homemade detergent with confidence!
The Quinoa Patties sound & look wonderful! I am going to add them to Pinterest and then I’m going to go make some for us.
I will also save the Quinoa rinse water for my hair!
I use borax to get rid of ants. We have been getting ants in our dishwasher this spring and there is no way I want to spray any poison in there.
I’ve been a no poo curly girl since last october! This is cool to find out of the “bottle” thinking.
http://joliluja.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/going-shampoo-free-the-curly-girl-way-of-life/
I wash my hair with honey. I keep it in a mason jar in the shower, and let it warm up. after I shampoo, I use the honey as a mask and just let it hang out for a little while while I finish up the rest of my shower, then rinse it out. it works magic. my hair is soft, and tame and wonderful afterwards.
I’ve recently been drinking fenugreek seed tea, which is actually a decoction, and afterward I have all these slippery boiled seeds left over. I read this post and thought, what if the slipperiness is due to saponins? So I crushed the seeds and rubbed them in my hair. Voila! Shampoo from leftovers! Also, in case you’re wondering, fenugreek seed tea is supposed to make you have bigger boobs. I volunteered myself to this experiment.
That’s crazy! So…has it been working? Hehe. That sounds like it could be good, fenugreek has that wonderful maple-y smell…
It has, in a way. I have since done a little reading on the chemical constituents of boiled fenugreek, and it turns out that the product I have is more like conditioner than shampoo. However, since I usually wash my hair with goat’s milk soap, I think that combining the two is going to get me the results I’m wanting.
Also, it is apparently wonderful in reducing skin irritation, so I think I’ll also use it as a moisturizer after I shave my legs.
fenugreek helps you lactate
I’ll have to try the quinoa rinse!
My best tip for taming wild hair is hair masks. I have wavy/curly hair that gets frizzy at the slightest rain or humidity, and they’ve really helped. I try to done one every couple weeks, or at least monthly. My favorite is one I make out of egg, yogurt, and olive oil – my hair never looks better than the next couple days after I do it!
If anyone is interested, my recipe is on my blog 🙂 http://naturallabeauty.blogspot.ca/2011/05/recipe-strengthening-hair-mask.html
I love the quinoa shampoo idea! I can’t wait to try it!
And as for the gak- you also SHOULD NOT try to put it down the drain. My brother learned that the hard way 20 years ago…
if, like me, you are still using store-bought shampoo and conditioner the best tip i have is to stop putting conditioner on your roots. (also, stop shampooing the ends, unless they are particularly gross.) i don’t remember where i first read this advice, but i saw a difference after the very next wash. instead of having greasy hair after one day i can go three days without washing it, and my ends look nice and soft instead of like a broom! win-win.
if, like me, you are lazy / a grad student / broke / don’t want people to know that you haven’t washed your hair in three days… then my best tip is BRAIDED. BUN. snazz it up with some fishtails or french braids, and nobody will ever suspect that you are all of the above. (except maybe the people who see you braiding your hair on the way to class.) messy braids are totally in right now, so don’t be afraid to take advantage of that.
Wow, I’ve tried quite a unconventional ideas on my hair. My fave is bentonite mixed with aloe vera juice to make a nice loose mud. I recently tried a wheat grass rinse (the powder mixed with water) and it did wonders for my itchy scalp. Rice rinses, because of its inositol is another good rinse for strengthening. Can’t wait to try quinoa!
Very timely! I was just contemplating what to do about strengthening my hair. Do you think I could use the quinoa water as part of my vinegar rinse?
Wow! That quinoa shampoo is so wild. Gotta say, I find it a little creepy that the rinse-water *sudses up* when you shake it, no additives required. Wonder what it does in your tummy if you neglect to rinse??
I can’t wait to try the Quinoa shampoo! Aaaaand I have a yummy recipe up my sleeve for the quinoa – I would post it here but you’ll have to wait and read it on my blog in the near future – and I’ll link back to here for the shampoo!
I may have to try that Gak recipe out for my son, too. Ah, memories.
I also meant to say, my go-to’s these days for my hair are cornstarch – in recent years post-pregnancy, my hair has gotten very greasy – and, my new favorite, cocoa powder! It works great on brown hair – no worries about looking grey like with the cornstarch.
Can you tell me more about putting the cocoa powder in your hair? Just straight cocoa powder or anything else? How do you apply it? Thanks!!
Can’t wait to try out the GAK!
I dip my finger tips in it and then massage it in at the roots. I have curly hair so I don’t brush it through, and it seems to blend fairly well considering I have black hair and the powder is dark brown.
I dip my finger tips in it and then massage it in at the roots. I have curly hair so I don’t brush it through, and it seems to blend fairly well considering I have black hair and the powder is dark brown.
Sorry – I just caught up with this thread! I do like TheGnome and rub it between my fingertips, then massage it in to the roots. I currently have short hair but even when it’s long, it’s the roots that need it, I find. It also makes your head smell yummy! Just be careful not to get it on light-colored shirts.
That Quinoa shampoo looks awesome!
I loved my GAK as a kid. I remember I messed it up so much so fast though, so we made our own like this. Thanks for bringing back fun memories!