# Very, VERY hard water and shampoo.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/very-very-hard-water-and-shampoo/73405>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 22, 2001, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/very-very-hard-water-and-shampoo/73405 "2001-07-22T05:28:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![chique](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@chique](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chique)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2001, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/very-very-hard-water-and-shampoo/73405/1 "2001-07-22T05:28:13Z")

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I recently moved into a house that has, as noted in the thread title, very, **VERY** hard water.

Before all you city people chime in, I need to make a few things clear:

1. A water softener is NOT an option (in other words, if you can talk grampa into buying one I’ll give you $100). Never mind that the nearest place to pick up salt for said hypothetical water softener is 30 minutes from here, and I’m lazy.

2. We have well water, not water from a tower or city system. Ergo, we don’t pay for water, sewage, or drainage, and all the water used in the kitchen/farm/bathroom goes to a drainfield that is filtered through Nature’s own devices and comes back up through the well.

3. Um. I’m sure if I tried I could make non-rural people understand how far out into the sticks I am, but I’ll stop there.

Anyhow.

Out here, it’s de riguer to run clothes through a spin cycle twice, to get all the soap out of them. Which is fine, if you’re a sweater. But my showers are taking me nearly half an hour - it takes that long to get the bubbles out of my hair.

Is there any such thing as a shampoo made for hard water? Or a pre-shampoo shampoo? Or a post-shampoo shampoo? Or … something?

Should I go back to Johnson’s and Johnson’s baby shampoo? Start using that Infusion stuff? Or am I pretty well screwed?

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**Author:** ![Gaspode](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gaspode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaspode)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2001, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/very-very-hard-water-and-shampoo/73405/2 "2001-07-22T06:27:55Z")

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Any good camping store should sell hard-water soaps and shampoos.

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**Author:** ![chique](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@chique](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chique)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2001, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/very-very-hard-water-and-shampoo/73405/3 "2001-07-22T06:44:49Z")

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_tucks that into her memory_

Thanks, Gaspode 🙂

Any more ideas?

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2001, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/very-very-hard-water-and-shampoo/73405/4 "2001-07-22T13:27:20Z")

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Borax will do wonders with hard water. It complexes all the metal ions that make water hard and lets the detergent do its stuff. You can find it in the laundry detergent aisle.