5 Ways to Care for Your Hair with Bathroom Items

We all know to brush our teeth with toothpaste and rinse our mouths with mouthwash, but it's time to mix up the morning bathroom routine. Go ahead, put toothpaste on your forehead and mouthwash, aspirin and baby powder in your hair. Besides feeling a little silly at first, you'll be solving the annoying problems of dandruff and chlorine-discolored hair.

While these hair care problems can happen to anyone, they don't happen every day. Save some money with these five at-home fixes, using stuff you already have in the bathroom to make the morning run a little smoother -- until the coffee maker breaks and you forget to pick up the dry-cleaning.

5: Remove Hair Color Stains

If you are trying to be economical by coloring your hair at home, it can be difficult to achieve salon-quality results. The dye gets all over your scalp and may even run down your face like mascara tear stains. Don't worry about getting messy because you can clean yourself up with toothpaste.

Toothpaste can remove the hair color stains that occur on the temples, the forehead, the hairline, the neck and around the ears. Put a dab on your fingertip, rub it gently on the stain, and rinse with lukewarm water. If necessary, repeat until the stain is gone.

4: Dandruff Prevention

Dandruff is caused by dead skin shedding from the scalp and flaking off throughout the hair. While dead skin and dry scalps are a common problem, dandruff can be caused by overexposure to extreme heat or cold or even the use of too many hair products, like sprays or gels.

Prevent dandruff by dabbing mouthwash on your scalp with a cotton ball. Leave on for 30 minutes; then shampoo normally. Make it a part of your shower routine to apply mouthwash after shampooing and before conditioning. Regular use can control a dandruff problem and eliminate bacteria in your hair and on your scalp.

3: Chlorine Green

Has chlorine discolored your hair? Light-colored hair can turn a ghastly shade of green when pool chemicals soak into the follicles. Hard metals like copper, iron and manganese from chlorinated swimming pools oxidize and then bond to the hair. The discoloring can take weeks to fade out naturally.

If you swim every day, wear a cap or wet your hair in the shower before dipping in the pool. For the rest of us, try this mix. Dissolve 8 tablets of aspirin in a glass of water, and rub the solution into your hair. Let it work for about 10 minutes, then rinse and shampoo.

2: Dry Shampoo Mix

Pressed for time? Try a dry shampoo instead of a shower or dunking your head in the sink. Dry shampoos are a great way to quickly rejuvenate your hair or maintain your style without water. And baby powder is an excellent dry shampoo.

Shake some baby powder on your hair, then brush it out. This is a great solution to an oily scalp because the powder quickly soaks up the excess moisture and cleans the hair, so you can leave the baseball cap at home. Keep some in your gym bag to freshen up after workouts or in your carry-on during long flights.

1: Remove Chewing Gum From Hair

How gum moves from a child's mouth to his hair will forever remain a mystery. Maybe the school bully put it there. At any rate, chewing gum sticks to everything, so trying to tease it out of hair with just your fingers will end up being a sticky mess.

What works? Apply petroleum jelly to the stubborn piece of gum. Using your fingers, work a large amount of jelly into the tangle, but make sure to coat the gum more than the hair. Soon the gum will slip right out.