Make Your Own Conditioner

Many store-bought conditioners contain ingredients that could irritate skin, cause harm to the environment, or even increase your risk of cancer. Some are also expensive - not to mention all the plastic bottles you'll need to recycle when you keep needing to buy multiple bottles of a product. It's easy, and much cheaper, to make your own conditioner out of natural ingredients you may already have around your home.

You can make a green tea conditioner by brewing two bags of green tea in two cups of hot water. Let the tea cool, and take out the tea bags. Pour the green tea into your hair, and wait for three minutes before rinsing it out with cool water.

You can also use mint tea as a conditioner, using the same proportions as the green tea rinse: two bags to two cups of boiling water. Let it cool, pour through hair, then rinse.

Honey's also a good natural hair conditioner. Mix it with water in a 1:1 ratio, then apply it to your hair. Since honey's more viscous than a liquid like green tea, you might want to rinse your hair extra thoroughly to make sure you get it all out. You can also make a honey-banana deep conditioning treatment by adding half a cup of honey to one mashed banana. Put it on damp hair and leave it for half an hour, then rinse out.

ReadyMade Magazine also recently published a recipe for homemade conditioner. You might have to look a little farther than your kitchen cabinet for these ingredients. Mix 2/3 cup water with 1/4 a teaspoon of guar gum, 1/4 teaspoon of xanthan gum, one teaspoon of organic olive, almond, canola or sunflower oil, and five drops of rosemary oil. Put the mixture into a blender and blend until it's emulsified. This mixture will keep for about a month.