THE BEST… Zero Waste Shampoo bar & Conditioner?

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Do you want a plastic-free zero waste hair care that works? Are you tired of sticky residue build-up and only finding shampoo bars that don’t work for you? I MIGHT have found one of the best shampoo & conditioner bars out there.. at least in my humble opinion. 🙃

This post is not sponsored and I paid for the shampoo and conditioner bar with my own money.
However, this post contains affiliate links. This simply means that if you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission without any extra charge for you.

Click here to watch the video, or click on the thumbnail above. Or if you prefer you can keep on reading…

I want to live a low waste, plastic-free life but it’s been hard to find hair products that both are better for me, for the planet, AND give as good results, or even better results, as my saloon shampoo & conditioners used to do.

BUT… I think I finally found a winner! I have for the past 4 months used Unwrapped Life’s The Fixer + Conditioner bar. I got the travel set which you can buy here.

Want to watch other shampoo bar videos?

I started using shampoo bars 2+ years ago and it’s been quite a journey… 😅 I have shared in 2 previous videos about my experience and you can check them out here below:

Have I found the best shampoo bar out there?

Have I found a shampoo bar that is as good as a shampoo you buy at the hair salons? A shampoo bar that doesn’t give you that icky sticky residue?

Well… I think I might have! 😄

After 2 years of using package-free shampoo, I am super excited to share this with you as it’s been quite a journey!

While trying to live a more low waste lifestyle I have connected with many others of you out there who are on the same mission. One thing that has been very clear to me is that we all have different needs & preferences. Some of you might be fine with just using something like Dr Bronner’s soap on hair and body & face (I love Dr Bronners but for cleaning… hehe… however, I love that it can be used in so many different ways!).

But then there are people like me who are a bit fuzzier and really would like our shampoo bars (or other low waste beauty products) to be as good as the high-quality products that we were used to using before transitioning into living a plastic-free lifestyle.

I’m really happy to say that I’ve now have tried a shampoo bar and conditioner bar (my first of the latter!) that doesn’t give you that sticky residue. The bar also makes my hair soft, voluminous and clean-feel similar to what ‘normal’ or ‘conventional’ shampoo does.

The company that makes the shampoo bar that I got is called Unwrapped life, and they’re based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (I must admit that it is a bonus is to also support a local business! 😉)

The shampoo and the conditioner bar that I have tried out from them is called ‘The Fixer’. It is specifically designed for coloured and chemically treated hair and I actually haven’t seen any other shampoo bars out there that are made specifically for coloured hair.

If you know me, or have followed me for a while, you might know that I love changing my hair colour and hairstyles now and then. My hair might look natural to you in the video above – but this is not my natural hair colour! My hair is meant to look natural – and hopefully does… 😉

Why did I choose this product?

As I mentioned already the shampoo bar & conditioner bar is specifically designed for coloured hair which piqued my interest. But I also really loved the sound of the rosemary, stinging nettles, lavender and sweet basil essential oils and the shampoo bars gorgeous smell!

When picking my shampoo bar in the store I was choosing between a few other bars from Unwrapped Life. As I have quite fine hair and they recommended The Balancer and The Stimulator bars for fine hair, and then they recommended The Detoxifier for blonde hair.

But I figured as my hair is longer now than it has been in over four years I should try out to The Fixer bar first. However, I might try some of the other ones mentioned above later on!

(Update: I have also since writing this tried The Hydrator-bar as well, which smells even more gorgeous! I find this bar moisturizes my hair really well – without weighing the hair down and making it look greasy. Highly recommend this bar as well!)

The secret to why their shampoo bar leaves “no sticky residue” is that they use a mild surfactant instead of saponified oils. Because they don’t use the saponified oils like many other bars out there you will have no sticky build-up. Due to this, they promise no transitioning time, unlike most other SLS free shampoo bars. I think I said it earlier but it’s worth emphasizing again that my hair has never been this clean and soft since I transitioned. 😄

Instead of Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLS), they use a gentler surfactant called Sodium Coco-Sulfate which you can read more about here. Sodium Coco-Sulfate only scores 1 on the EWG-website.

Another thing that I haven’t had to do since transitioning to this bar is to do any more Apple Cider Vinegar rinses. According to Unwrapped Life, this is because the bars are between 5 to 5.5 pH, and the conditioner’s pH is 6 which is very close to the hair’s natural pH-balance.

However, they say that there is no harm in doing an Apple Cider Vinegar rinse if you feel like you need it. I used to do ACV rinses once in a while, normally when the residue became too bad to handle, or if my scalp got really irritated and itchy. However, I’m pretty pleased to neither have sticky residue or an itchy skull any more. I didn’t mind doing an apple vinegar rinse once in a while – but I prefer to use it for food instead, to be honest! 😜

As I talked about in my first shampoo bar-video the water hardness has a big impact on the result of your shampoo, not just shampoo bars, but using shampoo in general. Hard water tends to make the cuticles on the hair shaft stand up, and as a result, make the hair appear rough and become easily tangled.

The water where I live here in Alberta, Canada is very hard, but I’m happy to say that this bar works really well in hard water! 😊👌🏻 Maybe it helps that the founders also live here? 😅

How long does a shampoo bar last?

I normally say that a shampoo bar normally lasts between 4 to 6 months, but this totally depends on a lot of the factors like how often you wash your hair, how thick & long hair you have, what type of water you are washing your hair in and how you store your shampoo bar etc.

On the Unwrapped-website, it says that their bars last between approximately 50 to 75 washes. But they also say it may vary due to the factors that I mentioned above. They also say that it should be the equivalent of two to three 16-ounce pots of liquid product – which is quite amazing if you ask me!

So I got my bar now around four months ago and I think I still have quite a bit of use out of this bar. I wash my hair 1-2 times a week, and my husband has also used this bar when we were away earlier this year. (He said he also really liked it! But he didn’t like the conditioner bar as much – I will talk a little bit more about my first time using a conditioner bar in a bit if you are interested to hear my opinion).

How to store your shampoo & soap bars so that they last longer

When I got my bars I got them with some cute travel tins for travelling, but this is not something I would recommend you to store your bar in normally (at least not with a closed lid!) I only use my tins for when I am travelling, or for when I bring them with me to buy a new bar from my local zero waste-shop.

Why I do not recommend you to store your bars in the travel tins is that they will not have the opportunity to fully dry out in between uses. As such I would make sure to invest in a soap dish if you don’t already own one.

Soap dishes I recommend:

I also advise you to not store your shampoo bar in the shower. Try to remember to move the bar out of the shower to another part of your bathroom, especially if there are other people living there. You don’t want your bar getting wet every time someone gets into the shower as this will make the bar last for a shorter period of time.
If your bar never gets the chance to dry it will also cause your bar to become soft & gooey, you know that disgusting state that sometimes bars of soap can get into! Personally, I think a gooey soap bar is one of the reasons why some people are hesitant to use bars of soap or even have a phobia against using them.

But what should you do if your bar does get wet, soft and gooey? If your bar needs to dry out more move it out from your bathroom into a dryer room in your house. Then put it on a soap dish for a couple of days and let it fully dry out. Make sure to turn it around at least once a day to make sure all of the sides of the bar gets fully dried out. That should sort out that gooey nastiness!

My thoughts on the conditioner bar

Now when I have longer hair than I had when I first moved to Canada I feel it’s more important to use conditioner on my hair. When I had shorter hair I felt it was never too hard to brush and comb out in the same way as it feels now, but now when I have a little bit longer hair it really helps to use a conditioner bar to be able to detangle and brush out my hair properly after washing my hair.

That being said I’m not fully sure about conditioner bars I must be honest. I don’t mind them, but they feel a bit strange when you’re used to using bottled conditioner. I think The Fixer conditioner-bar gives a great conditioning effect and my hair feels beautiful and much easier to detangle and all of that. My issue is really how to apply it on my hair compared to both a shampoo bar or bottled conditioner. I find it hard to make sure it spreads evenly across my hair.

Let me know in a comment below what your experience is with conditioner bars. Have you found any great ones that you absolutely love? I would love to hear more about this because this is a new journey for me to explore!

How to use a shampoo bar?

I did a little demonstration on how to use a shampoo bar in my first shampoo bar video that I made two years ago. You can check it out here, or keep on reading.

First I make sure to properly wet my hair, then I lather up my bar a bit in my hand and then apply it on my hair and my scalp in circular motions. Everyone does it slightly differently, some people apply it by doing strokes and some people like to lather it up in their hands before applying the lather to your hair. It’s all depends on you, your hair and whatever you prefer!

I found this bar is the bar that has lathered the best of the ones I have tried so far. As a result, I find it much easier to spread out in all areas on my hair and all over my scalp with that extra bit of lather.

Then I just gently massage my scalp and make sure to rinse out the hair properly. Once I rinsed my hair it’s time for the conditioner bar!

I found it helps to wet it up a bit and move your hand around it. I do not know if this is the best way to apply conditioner, but I find that doing this makes it easier to apply the conditioner into my hair than if I don’t.

What package does the shampoo and conditioner bar come in?

As the brand is called Unwrapped Life that might make you wonder… how are these bars packaged?

As I mentioned earlier my bars came in travel tins which were wrapped with a little cardboard box around. If buy your bars individually they come wrapped in kraft paper. On their website they say that this should not compromise the integrity or the performance of the bars.

If the kraft paper comes out with no oils on it, you can either recycle or compost it, but if it has oil on it make sure to only compost it. Personally, I think I would probably go for the composting option either way as I have a worm bin at home.

Finally, I want to clarify that I only made this video and blog post because I truly just love my Unwrapped Life shampoo bar. As mentioned earlier I’m not sponsored, and they haven’t given me any product or anything like that. I just wanted to share my experience because I know how hard it can be to transition to a shampoo bar and how many of you have given up because you haven’t found a good alternative.

If you will try out their shampoo bars – do not forget to get back to me and let me know what you thought! Also, let me know in a comment below: Have you transition to a shampoo bar? How has it been going? Have you been successful? Let me know which bars you’ve tried and how it’s been going for you!

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