$1 Root Touch-Up

I know, I know. Some of y’all, including my hairdressers present and past, will cringe while reading this, but here’s the deal:

I have four kids, each of whom needs approximately 467 things every day. I don’t have the money (or the luxury of time) to get my hair professionally done every 6 to 8 weeks, when my roots start glistening in all their chrome glory. So, for a long time now, I’ve used those root touch-up kits to extend the length of time up to 16 weeks between salon visits.

(Or, in my case, having the salon come to me–P.S. I love you, Sandy!)

However, is it just me, or does it peeve you to pay $6+ for a diddly amount of hair color? I mean, the price is almost the same as a full-size box. Not cool.

Frugal me figured there had to be a better way. And I found it.

Let me introduce you to my $1 root touch up regimen!

(Please ignore my retro-fabulous, battered, old countertops. This house was built in 1971, and they are original!)

You’ll need:

• A box of Revlon Color Silk in a shade close to your base color. Mine is Dark Auburn.

Color Silk retails for about $4, but as you can see, I scored mine at Big Lots for a whopping $1.90!

You’ll also need:

• A small plastic bowl for mixing (a clean margarine tub works great)
• A plastic medicine cup that measures in milliliters
• The brush from a root-touch-up kit (or really any small plastic brush)
• Rubber gloves
• A timer

Check your math before you do this, because we know how product sizes shrink almost daily, it seems. But today, each bottle contained 2 ounces, or just shy of 60 ml. You want to mix half of each bottle. So measure out 30 ml. from each bottle and pour it into your mixing bowl.

Recap the bottles and put them back in the box for next time.

Just a note: while you can’t keep color that’s been mixed, it’s perfectly fine to open the individual bottles and recap them to use again later.

OK, so…stir your color til it’s really well-mixed.

Brush it on your visible root areas. I also swipe a few stripes through my hair so that it blends in better.

Let it process for the amount of time on the insert (in my case, 25 minutes for resistant grays).

While you’re waiting, wash out your bowl, measuring cup and brush and store it away with the box of color for next time.

BTW, look how much was left over! I might try mixing only 15ml of each next time.

Holy cow, that would make for a fifty-cent root touch up!

(Be still, my frugal heart!)

Shampoo, condition and style as usual.

Then amaze your friends with your beautiful, frugalicious self…and share this post so they, too, can save their money for something more fun than hair color!

Or, spend what they’ve saved on groceries, socks and pencils, like I most certainly will.

But he’s cute. I don’t really mind.