As I was leaving church yesterday, a tiny elderly lady approached me.
“Have you done something different with your hair?” she asked. “I see you sitting up there playing the organ and my husband and I were trying to figure out what was different about you…”
“Oh great,” I thought, “People are critiquing my hair while I’m at the front of the chapel? Now I have to stress about how I look every week. Whatever happened to ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged?'”
I smiled through my inward groan and said, “Actually, I did dye my hair.”
“Oh, you wanted it to match your shirt, eh?” (I was wearing brown.)
“Heh. Something like that. I was tired of blond; this is my natural colour.”
She smiled knowingly, as if we were conspiring together on some great scheme. Reaching her bony, wrinkled hand up to grasp my shoulder, she pulled my ear close to her face and whispered, “That’s what we all say, dear.”
Before I could reply, she turned and sashayed away, pausing only once to add over her shoulder, “Don’t worry—it looks okay.”
…Oh. Thanks. I didn’t know I was supposed to be worrying, but now I surely won’t.
Anyway, who cares what she says? I’m feeling better about my hair now than I’ve felt since I started the No ‘Poo movement. Life is good. I have long since lost count of what day this is on my No ‘Poo experiment. I believe I’m starting the third week, but numbers and me are like oil and vinegar—as in, we don’t mesh. So I could be wrong. But I’m right.
My friends, I cannot lie: I FEEL FANTASTIC. My hair seems to have recovered from its first-week antics, and has settled in to a semblance of normalcy. The greasy feeling has lessened substantially—it feels like second-day hair (i.e. the way hair feels after shampooing it one day but skipping the next {which has always been a good day for me—back when I was using shampoo, my hair held curl and volume much better on the second day}), and it has been feeling like second-day hair for three or four days. It is starting to regain some shine. It still doesn’t smell. It’s smooth, and stays pretty well tangle-free throughout the entire day, even if it’s just hanging down in my face all day.
Quitting the ‘poo is the best thing I’ve ever done for my hair.
I’ll recap for the newbies:
I am not washing my hair with shampoo anymore, for forever, or until I can’t stand it any longer. You can read the background to this experiment here and here, Day One results here, Days Two and Three results here, and The Rest of Week One here, if you’re so inclined. Which you shouldn’t be, because meh, who has the time?
One confession (if we can call it that—more of a revelation, really, because “confession” implies I’ve sinned): The day I got home from being stranded in Montana, I scrubbed my hair with baking soda and rinsed it with apple cider vinegar. The main reason I did the baking soda scrub was because my hair smelled of campfire, and that’s a scent I can’t tolerate unless I’m actually sitting in front of one (campfire, that is). The vinegar smelled a little overwhelming in the shower, but as soon as it dried, the odor was gone. As a bonus, it left my hair feeling less greasy than before; I couldn’t tell a difference in appearance, though.
No ‘Poo Sometime in Week 2:
After using baking soda and vinegar to scrub my hair, it looked just as normal as always, and felt even *slightly* less greasy. I won’t use baking soda/vinegar every day, but on especially smelly hair days, it will work like a charm for me.
No ‘Poo Start of Week 3:
At the beginning of the day, my hair was holding its curls with even more “boing!” than the week before. Boing!
Boing! Boing!
I did pin back my bangs because they are not quite the length I prefer, and therefore they annoy me immensely. If I was allowing myself to use hairspray, it wouldn’t be an issue. But for now, pinning them back will do.
By the end of the day, my curls had loosened up a bit, and lost some of the boing!, but still looked like nice waves. I was pleased…
Can’t you tell by the alligator smile on my face?
I actually wished I could have achieved this look at the beginning of the day—maybe next week I’ll curl my hair and then try and comb the curls into looser waves. Would that work? I don’t know—I’m certainly no hairstylist.
The best news is that after sleeping on my curled hair, I woke up and STILL saw remnants of a wavy head of hair! Again, I was pleased. Before I went No ‘Poo, my hair would have needed a gallon of product to hold its curl through an entire day, night, and day again.
Repeat after me: No ‘Poo is the hairspray of the future. Chemicals are crippling. Chemicals are crippling.
It’s like every experiment I try turns to gold. If things keep going this well for me, I doubt I’ll ever go back to using shampoo.
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