I’m sitting here with a heavy heart and no reason to feel as low as I do. I have a roof over my head in a beautiful house and I house share with a good friend.
So, all bases are covered but it is hard with all the extra time you have to think – I think the inside of my head is a scary place sometimes!
As I write this in the midst of Covid-19 it’s hard to get focused, be creative and work out how to keep your business afloat. WOW! I am missing the salon!
But I’m keeping myself busy with cooking, cleaning and restoring. So, where previously I’ve been mainly prioritising the salon over home, I’m now looking at eco-friendly tips that work across both areas.
I’ve been pottering about in the garden, I had to bring the salon plants home for their own safety and they have all been re-potted and are safe and sound.
Let’s talk slugs: although we need slugs in our gardens as they are an integral part of the natural eco system, we don’t want the slugs to eat our vegetables or the flowers for the bees.
I HAVE THE SOLUTION, and it is natural; HAIR! The slugs don’t like touching it, if you spread a light layer around the plants that the slugs go for, the hair will stick to the slugs’ bodies, not only is the hair a slug repellent, but hair is full of nutrients that are great for your garden and you can also use waste hair in your compost as it contains Nitrogen.
Gross to some people (e.g. my housemate) but us hairdressers can handle a bit of hair!
One of the other projects I’ve started is stripping back a garden chair, a much bigger task than I first thought and I’m doing it chemical free, although my alternative is proving to work fantastically: equal parts warm water to vinegar and a whole lot of elbow grease. What I didn’t realise is there’s at least 3 layers of varnish on this chair that is nearly 20 years old. I will not be beaten by this chair!
It doesn’t stop there: vinegar has become my new dream clean tool. With all this extra time on my hands I have cleaned all the mirrors in the house – vinegar works so much better than any of the chemicals and you only need to do a deep clean with vinegar every 12 months, the rest of the time you can just use paper and water.
We have been doing this is the salon since we opened, something my hairdresser mum always swore by, only ever cleaning mirrors, windows and glass with a vinegar mixture.
Vinegar is also brilliant for your hair, mum did this when we were kids, she would spray vinegar on our hair to get the chlorine from the swimming pool out and give our blonde hair shine and I have a product to do this which I will also use on the mirrors!
I have also tackled the oven again, I soaked with bicarbonate of soda and vinegar all over the oven then scrubbed clean with a little elbow grease.
It hasn’t all been cleaning though, now is the time to work out how you are going to return to work. This has been at the forefront of my daily tasks.
We are, of course, staying in touch with our clients, getting a bookings page ready to make sure we are ready to run when we all resume to business as normal.
I honestly think we’re going to have an influx of clients when this is all over and this is an opportunity to introduce and enforce deposits – we’ve been inundated with people prepared to pay upfront or pay a deposit to secure an appointment and if we handle this properly then we should be able to safeguard our businesses by making this standard going forward.
Stay safe out there
Karine
