less chemicals = healthier hair. who knew?!

I'm one of those people for whom clean hair is a really Big Deal. As a teenager wallowing in the throes of puberty, my hair was super-oily and I could just never get it clean enough. At one point, I was washing it with dish soap (!) to get it clean and non-greasy feeling. (oh yeah. I was that girl. The one with the stringy hair). Anywho.. over the years I've had a love/hate relationship with my hair, trying to keep it feeling clean and product-free (well, except for that short affair with hairspray and huge bangs in the 7th grade...) and healthy. I always, ALWAYS had split ends. Baaad ones. Trimming my split ends just meant that my hair got shorter and shorter every month. Seriously. It was ridiculous. Then came pregnancy and the birth of my darling daughter. For all the while I was pregnant, my hair was relatively thick and healthy, thought I still had mad split ends, but then came the post-pregnancy hormone crash (and the ensuing whoopsie, I'm pregnant again! hormone rush) and literally, my hair was falling out. And I was freaking out. Seriously. Bald patches. I'm not even kidding.
I remembered once a long time ago that a guy friend told me that certain chemicals in shampoos actually caused hair loss, so I decided to do a little research. What I found was that the main ingredient in most shampoos (sodium lauryl or laureth sulfate) is actually really bad for your hair and causes split ends, and can cause hair loss. So I went in search of a shampoo that didn't have any of that nastiness in it. I ended up trying Burt's Bees, because, well, I'm a huge sucker for those bees, and because the price was actually less than I was paying for my 10-11.00 shampoo and conditioner that was wreaking havoc on my hair. I noticed a difference almost immediately. It doesn't foam up as much as regular shampoo, but my hair is clean and smells nice, and I haven't had a split end in months. AND, I stopped having handfuls of hair come out every time I washed! Hallelujah!
Sadly, my beloved Burts and most other natural-ish shampoos are hella expensive, and what with our upcoming economic downturn (aka me staying home to be a mommee) I'm going to need to come up with some way to get clean and healthy hair that doesn't cost me 30 bucks a month. I know of one friend who washes her hair with baking soda and vinegar, with great results, she says, but I'm just not ready to go that hippie... yet. So, off to research ways to make my own shampoo. Anyone got any suggestions?