Now that it's officially Plastic Free July I wanted to kick off the blog with a list of DIY's that you can do to cut plastic out of your life one product at a time! Personally I'm not huge on doing DIY's so I can guarantee you that if I'm doing these they really are simple, easy, and save money too. 

1. Oatmeal Hair Gel
I absolutely love this DIY! It's a homemade hair gel using just two ingredients: oatmeal and water. And it only takes 10 min from start to finish. Not to mention most hair gel runs at least $10 a bottle. I do use another hair gel on top of this one for better hold but this allows me to use a less each time I do my hair and making the life of my A Simple Planet Hair Gel last longer!

Here's how I make my oatmeal gel.

• 2/3 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon of raw oats

Put both the oats and the water in the pot at the same time and bring to a boil. Then lower to medium heat and begin stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 5-10 minutes. Strain the liquid out from the oats and then let it cool for several minutes before transferring it into a bottle for gel! Keep this in the fridge and it will be good for 1-2 weeks of use!

2. "Clorox" Wipes
These disinfectant wipes are no joke. Honestly I probably could have halved this recipe because I think we will be using this batch forever (which isn't a bad thing)! We love using these to wipe down large surfaces like our counter tops after we clean any food debris off them. We take out a cloth, ring it out into the container and then clean surfaces and put it right back in! Here's the "recipe" that I used to make this. 

Ingredients: 

• 2 cups distilled water
• 1 cup Isopropyl Alcohol (at least 70% concentrate)
• 1 tbsp of dish soap
• 3 drops of tea tree oil (optional)

Mix everything together in a jar with some cloths and you've got yourself a DIY disinfectant. 

3. Leave-in Conditioner
In case it wasn't clear already I love doing DIYs of hair products because it's so hard to find good products plastic free, and when you do find them they're so expensive! Especially when I know I can just make them at home. This might be the fastest DIY I have too. 

Here's what you need: 

• Spray bottle
• Water
• Conditioner 
• Protein Drops (optional)

All you do is fill your spray bottle with water and add a few pumps of conditioner and a few drops of protein drops! Honestly the amounts will really depend on your own hair type so play around with it until you find exactly what works for you. 

4. Spray Cleaner
Another DIY I just love because it's got all ingredients that I keep on hand with me so it's never hard to whip this up when needed. 

All you need to make an easy at home all-surface cleaner is: 

• Spray Bottle 
• 3/4 cup hydrogen peroxide
• 1/2 white vinegar distilled
• 1 tsp of dish soap or castile soap
• 10 drops of tea tree oil
• 20 drops of another scented essential oil (if desired)

Mix this all together in your spray bottle and give it a shake, now you've got an awesome household cleaner, I haven't found anything better at the store at getting rid of the stains in my shower than this! I will say this definitely smells really strongly of vinegar but the smell doesn't linger on your surfaces, but if you are very sensitive to smells then this might not be a DIY for you. 
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5. DIY's in the Kitchen:
When we think of DIY's I feel like we don't usually think about how there are a ton of things we can do ourselves when it comes to cooking! I wanted to add this in here to highlight a few kitchen DIY's I've tried out since going zero waste. 

Homemade tortillas
Make your own protein bars
My favorite homemade pizza dough recipe
World's best Foccacia Bread

Let me know in the comments below what your favorite plastic free DIY's are! I would love to try them out. 

Back in March I tried a beer rinse for the first time on my hair as a protein treatment, and now I'm back to try a rice rinse!

Like I mentioned with the beer rinse, a rice rinse is a protein treatment that you can use on your curly hair to help maintain the balance between moisture and protein. This is a fairly standard practice that a lot of people use and I figured I would try it since you can get rice from bulk bins and easily have this be a zero waste hair care product. 

To do this I followed the instructions on this blog post.

First, I measured out half a cup of rise and rinsed it in the sink. Then I put it in a pot with 1 cup of water and brought it to a boil, just like I was making rice!

After the rice came to a boil and the water was cloudy, I strained the water out into a bowl to use for my hair treatment. 

Here is where I had a moment of hesitation, my rice wasn't nearly done cooking. What do I do with the rice now? I could compost it, but tossing it just felt wasteful. I couldn't find anyone who regularly did these rinses say what they did with the rice after.

​Luckily, Kyle came up with a great idea on how to finish cooking the rice: I measured out the amount of rice water I had just removed from the pot (~3/4 cup), and I added in 3/4 cup of fresh water to the pot and brought it to a boil, then covered and simmered it for another 10-15 min. I wanted to see if I could actually fully cook this rice to eat after taking out the starchy water. 

It worked too! I was able to cook the rice and even taste tested it to ensure it was perfectly fine rice! Pro Tip: do this hair rinse on nights when you're planning a rice dish for lunch or dinner and you've killed two birds with one stone!

Back to the hair though: after I had my rice water in a bowl and cooled completely, I took that plus a second bowl up to my shower to begin rinsing my hair. 

First I wet my hair down and shampooed it like normal. After that, I let my hair sit in the rice water for a minute or so. Then, with the second bowl underneath my head I slowly poured the rice water over my head, catching it in the second bowl. 

I repeated this process a few times and also let my hair soak in the bowl a few times in between. I took my wide tooth comb and combed the rice water through my hair detangling it as I went.

This whole process only took me about 5 minutes. After I was done I rinsed my hair completely, conditioned and styled like normal. Here are the results!

I'm really happy with how it came out and will definitely be doing this again! Even the side of my hair that struggles to curl was curly which is always a bonus.

If I had to compare this to the beer rinse I liked this one better for the lack of smell, plus I always have rice in my kitchen but I don't always have a beer. I think the beer rinse did a better job of conditioning my hair, it felt so much smoother and was easier to detangle in the process. But the rice rinse did a fine enough job. 

What do you do to follow the Curly Girl Method and reduce waste? I'd love to try anything!

I've been following the curly girl method for the past seven months, and one of the biggest tenants of following this method is striking the perfect balance between moisture and protein in your hair. Finding this balance causes people to do crazy things, like rinse their hair in beer. 

Since I have fine hair I tend to need more protein than moisture and tend to do protein treatments a few times a month. However, my current bottle comes in plastic so when I finish using it up I want to find zero waste solutions to getting my hair it's protein fix. I had read that doing beer rinses could be a great protein treatment for your curls, but I haven't yet been brave enough to try it out. 
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Sunday night Kyle and I made an Irish dinner for Saint Patrick's Day, which also included a few gigantic beers. I couldn't finish my whole beer, but rather than letting the rest of it go to waste I left it out on the counter overnight so I could finally try a beer rinse in the morning. 

Here's what I did: 

In the morning I transferred my beer into a plastic dispenser bottle to make life a little easier on myself and I grabbed a bowl and took them up to the bathroom with me. I usually wash my hair in the morning just leaning over my tub. Following the instructions from this blog post I wet my hair down completely and shampooed it. Then I started rinsing it with the beer, letting it collect in the bowl so I could continue to use it. ​

After pouring it all over my hair I lifted the bowl to my hair to left it soak in the beer. I kept switching between that and finger combing my hair. It seriously felt like I had just deep conditioned it, my hair was so silky and smooth and moisturized feeling I could hardly believe it was beer (however, the smell did remind me).

A few minutes of doing this and then I rinsed out my hair completely and conditioned it, and then styled as normal. Here are the results: 

Honestly it came out pretty good! This is a pretty normal wash day for me so I was happy with it overall. The only issue is I think next time I should shampoo after because you could still smell the beer on my scalp closer to where it was more difficult to rinse out and where I wasn't conditioning. I smelled the bottom of my hair where I could and I couldn't smell any beer on it so I think that's definitely the way to go. 

I would definitely do this again. I love that beer is super cheap and you can always recycle glass or aluminum, making this a perfect zero waste technique for getting protein into your hair. 

I had been looking for a good gel for my hair after starting the Curly Girl Method for months. The one I had originally bought had glycerin in it which made my hair just straight-up frizzy. But I didn't honestly feel like spending more money to see if another gel would work, when I came across this video by Swavy Curly Courtney on how to make an Oatmeal Hair Gel. It's only 2 ingredients, oats and water, and takes about 10 minutes to make start-to-finish. 

This has now become a staple of my current hair routine and I make a new batch every 1.5-2 weeks or so. However, I don't use quite as much on my hair as she does in hers so to make mine last 1-2 weeks I only need about a third of the amounts she used. I have thin and fine shoulder length hair, so if you find you need more than this you can continue to increase the proportions until you have the perfect amount!

Here's how I make my oatmeal gel.

• 2/3 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon of raw oats

Put both the oats and the water in the pot at the same time and bring to a boil. Then lower to medium heat and begin stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 5-10 minutes. 

You can tell that the gel is done when it begins to look more blended and if you tap the spoon with your finger and then press your thumb and forefinger together, you should be able to see the gel consistency. ​

Once done, I put a strainer over a bowl and strain the gel into the bowl to cool. Don't forget to stamp down on the oats with your spoon to make sure all of the gel goes through the strainer After the gel cools down I will put it into my gel bottle and then straight into the fridge so it doesn't spoil! ​

Here are the results of the oatmeal gel in my hair after washing! It makes my hair look shiny and healthy!