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Comment by mattakinz | Hacker News Reader

Dr Bronner's soap for it's various uses. Laundry, cleaning, body wash, hand soap, etc.

I'll earn a hippie badge someday: rubber tramp in a VW to save rent and 32 oz. bottles of the OCD miracle. A few drops on a microfibre towel first since it acts as a surfactant, otherwise water goes everywhere. Able to get sniff-test and actual clean using around 240 ml of water; with hair-washing, around 720 ml. Works great for shaving. It seems strongly concentrated as it can irritate the skin (or I'm a wimp). Suggest 10:1 - 50:1 dilution for hygiene. If someone is extra funky, also add 10:1 hand-sanitizer... there's a tiny risk of using EtOH but it would seem less than legacy EtOH mouthwashes.

What does your first sentence mean? English is not my first language.

It means he lives very frugally.

"Earn a badge" comes from a kids club called scouts where you earn a badge that you sow on your shirt for mastering a skill or doing certain things:

https://www.scouting.org/programs/boy-scouts/advancement-and...

So he's joking about earning a badge of being a hippy. Rubber tramp means live in a van (presumably a VW camper van).

I tried using this stuff as general purpose shampoo and it destroyed my hair. I was only washing my hair once every two weeks (natural oils, you know) and I thought it'd be good to clear up the scalp of extra oils but instead it sucked me dry.

How much did you use? I've used it as a shampoo almost every day for months on end with great results, although I only use a dime-sized amount and I add water with it.

Do you mean that you put it in a spray bottle with water?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I think I used it like normal shampoo. To be fair, my hair would be decently oily by that point.

No, just making sure that the hair is wet enough to distribute the smallest possible amount of soap. The trick is to figure out the minimum amount of soap you need to get all of your hair and scalp sudsy. I've used a shampoo-sized dose of Bronner's and had basically the same bad experience you described.

Oh okay, yeah I definitely didn't find the minimum. Maybe I'll give it a try another time-- the stuff is cheap and natural and whatnot.

I love Dr Bronner's, but I haven't been able to turn it into a decent shampoo. Even after mixing it with different things. It's a bit too drying and my scalp develops a thick sebum layer.

It's a great handwash and all-purpose cleaner. It's good as a bodywash, but too drying. I'm trying to find some good probiotic soap as a replacement.

For Dr Bronner's to work effectively and cheaply, I think it's key to dilute and to use a foaming pump.

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