Hair & the ways in which we clutter our lives
ok, so one more thing…basically i followed this NPR thread about hair…going from curly to straight and vice versa being hormonally related but the exact process is unknown. Interested me since my hair has changed dramatically in texture/color/waviness 3 or 4 times in my life and I am curious to know if my little lamb will retain her curly hair past toddlerhood or if my monkey girl will regain some curl (since she sometimes INSISTS she HAS curly hair just like mama and lil sister). ANYHOW, it linked me to another npr story about hairwashing frequency…apparantly Americans typically wash their hair at least 5 times per week (basically most days and I’d venture to guess most showers) as opposed to Europeans who wash their hair 2 or 3 times a week (ah-HA! I AM european in the ways that count ! ). anyhow, THAT article had a link to this turn of the 20th century article counseling more frequent washing in winter, say once every 2 weeks instead of every 4 or 6 weeks.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=2&res=9904E5DA143EE233A25753C1A9639C946997D6CF
And we wonder why our grandparents got so much done? I mean imagine, let’s say you bath less often, and when you do you just quickly soap up and rinse off, this takes what 3-5 minutes? takes longer to let the water warm up! Actually, in my current mommy mode, that IS basically how most showers go…my friend Francesca gave me a 4 minute egg times to save twater by reducing your shower time…HA! I haven’t had a 4 minute shower yet and she gave it to me 2 weeks ago! Well, not stricktly true, I SHARED a shower with both little girls and THAT was more like 15 minutes or more, but then hey we all used the same water, so maybe 5 each?
And there are SOOOO many ways we make our daily life “to-dos” too time consuming. I mean, when my grandmother bought something at the amrket, foodstufd, i mean, produce, it went home with her in the bag she brought to the store. the she was DONE. She DID sort of collect the random plastic and paper bags you get from buying things to use as trash bags, but otherwise done. i went to Costco today and mysingle serving prepackaged bag of 60 strong cheese sticks came not only all plasticized, but then in it’s OWN plastic bag which i carried in a cardboard box. Just to open the package to fit my dairy bin in the frigge and then recycle the plastic bag, take the recycling out to the big blue bin outside, not to mention flattening the cardboard box and putting THAT out…these thigns take TIME> Not to mention the GUILT of deciding whether I should use the cardboard box to a) conceive of a kids project for tomorrow (you know, to draw on, make a car, whatever) b) save to use as longer term storage instead of buying more plastic bins over time, c) recycle it
And especially with little kids at home, there is ALWAYS the temptation to repurpose things as art projects. I mean, even without MY suggestions, Z always wants to “make a television” out of a chip box or, a castle, or for example, last week she STUNNED me by INSISTING we individually seperate and keep these little plastic pieces part of some sort of toy packaging that are meant to provide a place for the wire toy-holders to go from one side of the box to another. There must be like 30 of these little suckers each with 1, 2, or 3 holes that she’s saving now. I’ve seen her pretend they were chips in her toy kitchen, use them as money, and yesterday they were uh…space jewels I think it was. Ok, cute, imagination, wonderful. but meanwhile, in my award-worthy cluttered home i am now ALSO archiving 30 little annoying pieces of plastic -ahhhhh!
OK, so this was about hair? Yeah, I think I’ll go lay mine down on a pillow so I can tomorrow do yesterday’s tasks. My grandmother didn’t BLOG either…heehee