All travelers with any significant amount of hair have, at some point, struggled with packing shampoo. There’s the question of what size bottle to bring: standard-size bottles don’t meet TSA regulations for carry-on bags, and travel-size bottles are only useful for short trips. (If you have hair like me, a travel-size bottle of shampoo gets you through two shampoos, max.) Then, if you decide to put a bottle in your luggage, you must encase it in sealed plastic bags and cross your fingers that the change in pressure won’t cause it to open and leak all over during passage.
While preparing for my current lengthy travels, I also had to consider space and weight. Since I am backpacking, every bit of space is precious, and every ounce of extra weight must be harshly evaluated. I was tying myself in knots over the shampoo question, arguing with myself over whether it was smarter to take a larger, less backpack-friendly bottle of shampoo or to take smaller bottles and endure the frustration of searching for replacements with some frequency.
Then I discovered solid shampoo. Let me tell you, this stuff is a game-changer. It comes in a solid disk – much like a bar of soap – making it compact and easy to pack. It doesn’t take up much space or weigh much at all, and, since it dries to a solid, it doesn’t leak in my bag. Even better, one bar seems to last longer than one bottle of shampoo. It took me six months to get through the first of the two bars that I packed.
As an added bonus, my solid shampoo is made by LUSH, a company with a compassionate reputation. LUSH products are vegetarian and not tested on animals, and the company engages in ethical buying practices. It is a company that I am pleased to support … almost as pleased as I was to discover solid shampoo.
Image credit: Memphis CVB (image cropped)