Baking Soda Hair Solution

I've had a couple of friends ask me how I use baking soda to wash my hair after my mentioning it on Facebook awhile ago. Here's the method that I use:

To start off, you have to make the hair wash! I make about four washings worth at a time by bringing four cup of water to a boil, and then stirring in 1/4 of a cup of baking soda. Boiling the water first helps the baking soda dissolve. When I don't boil the water first, a few days after I make it I have a baking soda brick at the bottom of my soap bottle, haha! Once the water has cooled sufficiently, I pour it into an old, cleaned soap bottle.

I make a conditioner by taking another bottle and filling it with three cups of water and one cup of vinegar. I also add some vanilla beans to take away from the vinegar smell ;). The vanilla beans last for a while- I only switch mine out every few months. And this is optional, if you don't have any :).

When washing my hair, I pour about a cup of the vinegar over my hair, and scrub my scalp really well, then let it sit for three-five minutes. Then I pour about a cup of the diluted vinegar on my hair. This is both to condition the hair, and to break down the baking soda, making it easier to rinse out. I just give my hair a quick rinse, but if you don't have the vanilla beans, you might want to rinse the vinegar out pretty thoroughly ;).

We started using this method about four years ago. Mommy had to quit using it as it dried out her hair, and Tori's hair is so thick that it never really did much good for hers, but my hair *hates* shampoo!!! I can wash my hair with the shampoo that Tori and Mommy now use one evening, and it looks and feels like I need to wash it again the next morning! But using the baking soda, I usually only wash my hair about every three days.

I have a friend who uses honey to moisturize her hair along with the baking soda. For some people the baking soda and vinegar and/or honey works, for some it doesn't... for some they just think we're a bit nuts. Haha :). But it's about the only thing that makes my hair feel clean!

Have you ever used baking soda "shampoo"? How did you do it?