Mama Gone Green is a blog dedicated to raising happy children and reducing our impact on the Earth. My name is Taryn and I am the mother of 2 young kids and an environmental studies instructor at a community college in Portland, Oregon. Please join me as I journey through life as a mama, teacher, knitter, photographer, gardener, and environmentalist!

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Lice Away


School is back in session and so are the lice. I never had lice until I was 34. And since then, I have had it probably 8 times. It is a constant battle around here.
By now, I have a routine down. We mainly use LiceFree, a pesticide-free homeopathic gel that has worked well for us. In a pinch, I use olive oil, but it is messy and leaves hair soft, yet very greasy looking. The LiceFree works by dehydrating the lice, so it actually leaves hair quite dry, but that is fairly easily remedied.
Anyways, dealing with lice no longer creeps me out, but it is time consuming and expensive. To treat me and the kids costs about $30, and takes about 2 hours to treat us, about 3 loads of laundry, and a thorough vacuuming. In other words, it takes up most of my day each time we find them.
So, my new goal now is to prevent them from even getting on us in the first place. Lice seem to thrive here in Portland, especially with young kids who are likely to be very close to one another. And since going anti-social doesn't seem like the right option, I think all I can do is try to make our hair unappealing to those little buggers.
After reading various blog pages about lice prevention sprays, I decided to make one to try out. I got a spray bottle and added 30 drops of lavender oil and 30 drops of rosemary oil for each 4 ounces of distilled water. I call it Lice Away. It doesn't smell wonderful, but it doesn't smell terrible either. My goal is to spray on all of our heads each morning, hoping to keep the lice away. I guess I will let you know how it works...
Anyone else have a wonderful lice deterrent recipe that they can share? I wouldn't mind having a few tricks up my sleeve.... Pin It Now!

3 comments:

  1. Fingers crossed it works. Keep us posted.

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  2. Tea tree oil! Diluted just a bit.

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  3. Fingers crossed! Another good way is to use conditioner on the kids' hair after every wash. Apparently it makes it almost impossible for the lice to cling on.

    We've so far had one incident with head lice, but all three boys had it. They have really thick hair, so it was quite a thing to get that lice comb through their thick mops. ;) I used some stuff I got in the pharmacy, but to be honest, I think it was mainly the lice comb that worked.

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