Sugaring, Hard Water & Apple Cider Vinegar

It's been a while, I know. I've learned a lot since my last post.

First was sugaring. I did it with my sister, the owner of the legs you saw in the illustrated sugaring post. The process was something like this. We put two cups of sugar, 1/4th cup of water, and 1/4 cup of lemon juice in a small pot, mixed it up, and heated it up. Once it melts, it will start boiling. You have to let it boil for a while, stirring it to keep it from burning. The bubbles from boiling will be thick and white, so to check the color of the sugar, take the pot off heat occasionally. It'll start out clear. Stop when it's a dark amber color.

We poured the molten sugar into a heated up mason jar. It took a long time to cool and we didn't wait long enough. Take a butter knife and dip it into the goo. You should get a fairly solid bridge of stretched sugar that once lowered back to the surface of the sugar retains its shape for a good five or ten seconds. Play around to find out what works for you. The first time we did it, the goo wasn't cool/hard enough, and it did a mediocre job. We left it to cool for a while longer and it was far more effective.

The process is similar to waxing (I suppose, although I've never waxed in my life). I used a butter knife and spread the goo on a strip of my leg in the direction of hair growth. Make it thin and even. Put a similarly sized strip of cloth (thin cotton or muslin) on the goo-patch, rub it to make sure it's properly adhered, wait about ten seconds, and then pull it swiftly opposite the direction of hair growth. Try to keep the force you use to pull parallel to your skin. It can sting a bit, but any visible irritation I had afterward was gone by the next day.

One nice thing about sugaring is that you can wash the sugar and hair off the cloth with warm water and it's not bad for the septic system. Also, you can leave the sugar in the jar for as long as you want and quickly reheat it in the microwave whenever you want to sugar again. (I did it for a minute and it was way more melted than it needed to be. Do it in five or ten second zaps.)

The first time I sugared my legs, I had let the hair grow for about a month. (It was probably between 1.5 and 2" long.) I have thick body hair, so the results were pretty phenomenal. There were some stragglers left, the thicker of which I pulled out with tweezers. Similar results with my armpits. And while the results last longer than shaving, unlike shaving, the hair grows back unevenly, with longer stragglers, faster growing hairs, etc., so I'd have to wait a really long time for sugaring to be effective again. But it's a good way to clear the field if you're going for a seasonal BANG sort of hairlessness. I'm going to be shaving with my double-edged razor until things even out again.


On to the hair. As I mentioned before, the hard, well water situation at home was giving me trouble with my hair. It got pretty greasy and dandruffy, and since baking soda and vinegar didn't work as well as I hoped, I went for a thorough brushing, a corn-starch application and massage, more brushing, and a thorough rinsing. It worked really well, surprisingly, and I've gone four or five days without washing my hair without it getting noticeably gross. So, if you're in a hard water situation, try some corn starch, scritching, massaging, brushing, shaking, and rinsing.


I found raw, organic Bragg's apple cider vinegar at our local fancy-pants grocer, and it's taste is much better than the distilled stuff I got in a jug at the ghetto-ass grocer I go to during the school year. It's doing wonders for my bowel movements and I'm sleeping much more soundly than I was without it. I've been drinking it twice a day, morning and night, for about a week. It's been effective in aiding digestion. Maybe a little too effective. So I'm going to cut down to once a day and see how that goes.


So, there we go. Summer is a lazy time, and I'm glad I can get away with not bathing regularly without as much trouble as I used to encounter.