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Making Do: Shampoo

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I have a bit of a silly, but quite practical, story of making do to share today (see previous making do posts here and here).

As we near the end of the month, I’ve been struggling with our grocery budget. As it stands now, I’ve spent $483 on groceries this month – nearly $100 over our $400 budget. Obviously this is a problem, particularly in light of our lower income that we’re working with. So when last week I was beating the bottom of the shampoo and conditioner bottles and finally admitted that we have NONE left I was a bit worried (side note: yes, they both ran out at the same time!!! Ugh!). We buy shampoo/conditioner out of our grocery budget and I knew we had no money leftover for these products. But my hair isn’t the kind that can just go a full week between washes. What was I to do?

Instead of simply saying, “oh well” and running to the store to buy more, I decided to really dig into the bathroom cabinets. Please tell me I’m not the only one whose bathroom cabinets are filled with all kinds of random clutter! Anyway, I was digging around hoping to find a random spare bottle of shampoo when I found the perfect short-term solution to our problem that could get us through to the month of October…..I found a whole storehouse of old hotel shampoo/conditioners that I always steal when I’m traveling! I used to travel a lot for work-related things (at least 2-3 conferences per year), and I would always make a point to take the hotel shampoo and conditioner! My thought at the time was that they could come in handy if we ever travel on vacation somewhere and need little travel-sized bottles of these products (which is kind of silly, because when we visit family they always have full-sized bottles of shampoo/conditioner we can use, and when we travel elsewhere and stay in hotels….guess what…they always have these mini toiletries for free). So all of these years-old products have been sitting around collecting dust and cluttering up my bathroom cabinets.

I happily grabbed a few, put them in the shower, and haven’t had to worry about it since. They’ll easily last us until the month of October when I can buy some fresh full-sized shampoo and conditioner from the grocery store.

Score #1 for my pack-rat tendencies! Woohoo!!!

Do you keep the mini bottles of shampoo/conditioner from hotels? What other products do you “pack-rat” (I’m using that term affectionately)?


20 Comments

  • Reply TPol |

    I would use them all up before I bought any new shampoo and conditoner. This way you can get rid of both the old stuff and the clutter.

    I stock up on shampoo and body wash whenever there is a real good discount. I never buy conditioner because a small bottle of conditioner comes with every boxed hair dye I buy. I cannot use them up fast enough since I have very fine hair. I will mix up each small bottle with water to make my own leave-in conditioner. It is so much easier to spray some conditioner as opposed to trying to rinse it early in the morning. One part regular conditioner to three parts water is a recipe I read somewhere this week. Will give it a shot.

  • Reply Sluggy |

    I was reading this and was going to ask if you had any hotel mini bottles laying around but you “went there” before I could comment. lol
    Nice save.

    Come over to my blog later this week and enter my giveaway coming up. It’s a box of toiletries and things I give away that I get for free(or almost free), mostly from Rite-Aid drugstore shopping. And there is ALWAYS a bottle of shampoo in these giveaway boxes. 😉

  • Reply Homes |

    So, my story is a little different when it comes to shampoo. Almost 2 years ago, my eardrum burst due to illness and has never fully healed. Consequently, I can’t let water get in that ear and washing my hair is now a pain. I’m down to once or (rarely) twice a week washing and I hated how my hair always felt gross and my scalp never seemed clean. About 6 months ago I switched to using an all-natural froo-froo shampoo bar (unrelated and not for any health reason – I wanted to find a henna shampoo that would give my blond hair a subtle red tint and this was all I could find). The bar came with a recommendation to ditch conditioner and use apple cider vinegar (ACV). I did and I LOVE it. I keep a small bottle of ACV in the shower along with a 32-oz plastic cup.Two cap-fulls in the cup, fill it with water and rinse the hair. My hair feels so much softer now and I can go a whole week without washing my hair and not feel like a real-life PigPen. Plus, my scalp is doing much better too. Now, I have naturally dry-ish skin and hair, so I don’t know how it would work if one is an oil-producing machine (that my chapped hands wish I was!), but it might be worth a try. ACV is sooo much cheaper than even the bargain basement conditioners!

  • Reply Jean |

    I stayed in a hotel this past weekend. I brought other hotel shampoo & conditioner to use (not sure why) so the bottles in the hotel room were unused on Saturday. When we got back to the room that afternoon, there was a second set of bottles! That was my cue to take both of them home with me. It was Paul Mitchell, too!

    Are you familiar with $5 Dinner Mom? Her M.O. is to buy her toiletries/non-food items for next to nothing or even free (deodorant, shampoo, tp, toothpaste) so that she has more $$ to spend on food. She does a lot of shopping at drug stores for those items. I keep trying to get into that ‘mode’ but it seems like I either never have my coupons or don’t catch items on sale when I’m running out. Maybe you can scope out sale & coupons in the next month to help the budget. check out her website – she always has a blog post every week matching coupons & sales.

    You’re doing great – it’s amazing how much your thought process has changed in the short time you’ve been blogging here. Keep up the good work!

    • Reply Ashley |

      Thanks for the tip! I’ve heard of $5 Dinner Mom, but haven’t frequented her site. I’ll have to add it to my rotating list! : )

  • Reply KK |

    I also hoard hotel shampoos and conditioners! Bonus points if they have a little bottle of shower gel too (I am not a bar soap fan).
    For a while there I would always find BOGO free coupons for Pantene Pro-V or Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner. So of course I would stock up while I could. There was a good 10 months where I didn’t have to worry about running out, because I had so many back-ups! Now I’m using up the random shampoos I have (I always run out of conditioner first, which leaves 1/4 full shampoos) and I big ole bottle of conditioner I got at Costco.
    If I ever see bath products on sale I always try and stock up! That way there is always a back up and I’m never left running to the store for shower gel. I do the same with toothbrushes and toothpaste, can never have too many.

  • Reply Jen From Boston |

    A fwe years ago I read that you don’t really need shampoo (of course, this will vary person to person). The more you wash your hair, the more your body will produce oils to re-moisturize it. So I switched from washing my hair every day to washing it every other day. There was maybe a week where I had an itchy head, but after that no problem.

    There are some people who go even farther and only wash their hair with a baking soda paste and apple cider vinegar rinse. I’m too lazy to make a paste, and I used to use vinegar but it made me paranoid I wasn’t rinsing enough and I’d walk around smelling like salad dressing.

    I also stopped using conditioner – a hair dresser told me I didn’t need it. So far, I haven’t really missed it. I also stopped buying fancy shampoo and now I just use Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo. Of course, depending your hair this might not work for you.

  • Reply Walnut |

    I save hotel conditioner and use it as shave cream. Works like a charm and saves me some cash.

  • Reply Taira |

    I sign up for samples online all the time. I recently went through my linen closet to find a ton of shampoo and conditioner samples. I have been using those for almost a month.Since we will be moving soon its nice I won’t have to move extra stuff and it is saving me some money.

  • Reply adam |

    it sounds silly, but I think these times when the budget is exhausted and you have to be creative, these are the moments that build character and financial discipline. You learn that you CAN make do, and that you CAN stick to a budget, and that a little creativity goes a long way.

    So it seems like a silly little thing to hold off buying a new bottle of shampoo, but I think you grow a little bit in these moments.

  • Reply Christine |

    I haven’t ran out of shampoo/conditioner in a year because I stocked up when coupon matchups at cvs/rite aid made them free or close to free ($0.50 a bottle). You might want to look into it- then you’ll never run out because you can stock back up 2x a year or less, depending on how much storage space you have!

  • Reply Louise |

    I’ve switched to bi-carb (for shampoo) and vinegar (for conditioner) for the last 10 years and my hair looks great. Next time you need to save money you can google that, great for your hair, the environment, and your shower will need 80% less cleaning!

  • Reply Kayla @ Shoeaholicnomore |

    I went through and used all my minis a couple months ago when my budget got tight too and I was out of shampoo – but I didn’t think about blogging about it! Great post and way to get creative!

So, what do you think ?