Another Reason to Love Trader Joe’s

Have I praised Trader Joe’s enough?  Nah, I don’t think so.  Let me share a little something that I could almost call life-altering.  Ok, not really life-altering, but it is pretty darned stunning.

I have no idea why I picked up a bottle marked “Castile Soap” — I had no idea what castile soap is — but the name sounded intriguingly old-fashioned (and French…  and revolutionary…  and then I realised I was thinking of the Bastille, which has nothing much to do with soap, really…).  Anyway, I picked up the bottle and turned it over to read the ingredients, and I was intrigued.

How good does that sound?  How righteous?  I can pronounce everything on that label.  I know (roughly) what it all is, without having to have a Masters in chemistry!  Skin Deep gives it all a nicely reassuring low hazard rating.  And when was the last time you saw any commercial cleaning product with so few ingredients?  And what’s more, I really liked that peppermint being in there.  I unscrewed the lid and had a little sniff and was carried away by that gorgeous scent — a smell that comes not from some test-tube in a lab at IFF, but from a good healthy dose of the real thing.  I checked out the price, fully expecting it to be some jacked-up, specialist-product price…   it was $2.99.  $2.99! I put the lid back on that bottle and it went straight in my trolley.

Now, here’s the thing that’s crazy about this stuff — the other side of the label lists its suggested uses… and they range from shampoo to body wash to bubble bath to fruit wash to dish soap to — wait for it — bathroom cleaner to floor soap.  Floor soap… Shampoo…  I’ve never ever contemplated using the same stuff on my hair that I use on my floors.  And here’s the second crazy thing — it really works as all of these things.  I use it on my floors all the time and it not only gets them clean, that peppermint rises up and makes the whole house smell gorgeous.  I put it in a hand-soap dispenser and it cuts through the smell of onions or fish like a knife (it’s a bit runny, so I put it in one of those soap dispensers that makes it foam up and that solves the problem).

But what has really made me come over all evangelical about it is when I washed my hair with it.  It gets my hair clean — squeaky clean.  Not the kind of platicised, chemicalised clean that we’re all used to from normal shampoos — my hair doesn’t feel slick and easy to run my fingers through, like it’s been coated in something.  When I use this castile soap as a shampoo, it’s kind of hard to run my fingers through my hair… the same way it’s a bit hard to run your finger over a clean dish  when you’ve got all the soap off it and dried it and it’s squeaky clean.

And boy, can’t I tell this is something different when I step out of the shower and dry my hair.  Suddenly, it’s springy…  it’s bouncy…  like my limp, sorry-for-itself, poker-straight hair has never been in my entire life!  Every time I’ve used this soap as a shampoo, I have had a good hair day.  Every time.  Granted, I don’t use wash my hair with every day — it feels too special, like I shouldn’t be allowed to use it every day. I hold onto it and only allow myself it a couple of times a week.  It’s like I’m almost afraid to break the spell.

I used it on E1 today.  I knew this was going to be the ultimate challenge to the Castile Soap Magic, because her curls are so insane that they need very, very special treatment to keep them from turning into a wild, uncontrollable mess.  But I wanted to see what this stuff would do to it, so I poured a bit into my hand today and lathered up the post-sleep tangled mess that sat atop her head.  I rinsed it to that squeaky clean-ness and then, for good measure, I lathered it up all over again.  When I rinsed it this time and then tried to run a comb through it, it was as impossible as I’d feared it might be.  Without being coated in gobs of creamy conditioner, that hair grabbed onto the comb like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood and would not let it go.  Damn.  The Castile Soap Magic had failed!  The spell was broken!  Damn!   So, I gave in and coated her hair in its usual handful-sized glob of conditioner and — ah, there! — the comb ran through beautifully.  Her hair laid — neat, heavy, defeated — in straight lines down her back, tamed at last.  And, even after I’d rinsed the conditioner out, her hair was still cowed, still heavy and tired from the fight.

But I wanted her hair to have that same spring that mine has after being washed in the castile soap, so I put another little puddle of it in my hand and very gently combed it through her hair, and then just barely massaged it into a lather — carefully, carefully… so that those curls couldn’t work into tangles again.  And this time, when I rinsed it, the curls began to rise up into lovely ringlets.  And when her hair dried, it was so light and full of body — and looked amazing.

Have I convinced you?  Go!  Go now!  Buy it.  Wash your floors, wash your dishes, wash your hair.  Feel righteous.  You’ll love it!

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