I'm pretty sure I've tried every shampoo/conditioner combo on the market. From VO5 to organic brands. All with the same results-aside from 2 brands, every other product made my hair feel dry & brittle even after the bottle was long gone. I don't style my hair much. On rare occasions I'll blow dry my hair or use a straightener. My hair is thick but fine, semi straight on the outer layers but near the nape of my neck the underneath layer is wavy. A horrible combination, as it likes to poof into a big frizzy ball. So when I do decide to "get fancy" I'll blow dry my hair so that I can leave it down, and that's about all I can do. It won't keep curls unless I shellac my hair with 2 cans of Aquanet and when I was 10 years old I was in tears the day I was told a perm wouldn't hold in my hair when all of my classmates had it (thank goodness, actually dodged the awkward 80's 'do pictures there!)
About 2 years ago I decided to do the Locks of Love donation. The girl was ogling my hair, declaring over & over "oh what I would do if I had hair as healthy as yours! What's your secret?!" I told her just plain old Pantene with an occasional tub of the deep conditioner, as well as washing my hair every 3 days or so, so long as I wasn't excessively dirty that day. She was honestly baffled that my drug store regime was working so well.. and to this day, I wonder if she was truly in love with my hair, or just looking for a bigger tip. But all in all I'd say that my hair, though needing a good trim, seems to be doing alright-not that I can tell most days, as I almost always have it up. I'm actually not that invested in my hair. The most I truly care is to keep it healthy so that it can grow long again for another donation.
Why did I decide to try & change what seems to be a working combination for my hair? Well, first of all, a while back I had read an article about what dyes, medicines, cleaners & shampoos are doing when they leave our drains & it got me thinking about all those "words" we see on the back of almost every commercial product. What exactly are those ingredients? Why in the world do we need them? I'm learning more about how we take for granted the way the body absorbs all the things we expose it to from the outside in. But the article was definitely an "a ha!" moment. So when trying to find a product that worked well for me in the organic lines, the cost to find something that is AMAZING was basically impossible in my budget for a family of 5 and I continued with my drug store purchases.
I started Googling various methods of natural, cheap, effective hair cleaning processes. Basically what it boiled down to was, of all the ideas, I happened to have baking soda & apple cider vinegar in the cupboard.
So, tentatively this afternoon, after a couple hours of pep talking myself into doing it, and a friend's prompting, I got my products ready, headed to the shower feeling like a blooming idiot, and washed my hair according to all the directions I'd read, combining what seemed to be the most popular of techniques. Over & over I thought to myself how absolutely weird I am for doing this (and subsequently what I should name this blog after said friend suggested I blog about it). But most of all, I was reminding myself that I had my trusty shampoo just in case I needed to hop back into the shower and pretend this never happened.
My hair washing went like this:
I started with the warm water & baking soda mixture that I mixed up in the kitchen ahead of time using 1 cup of extra warm water & a heaping tablespoon of the baking soda. Then I put it into a small plastic drinking bottle I had here. Next I combined my tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar with a cup of extra warm water. This I put in an open style cup, since I didn't have another drinking bottle.
Before I got into the shower I brushed my hair really well, making sure to have no tangles. Next, I saturated my hair with water, though I'm not sure I needed to. I poured the baking soda mixture into my scalp, trying to get it to all stay put. I massaged the concoction in as best as I could, waited a minute (thinking of all the ways I felt like an idiot) and rinsed my hair out well. At this point the bottom half of my hair felt kind of brittle, but to be honest, it always done after I get done shampooing, so I wasn't too worried. Next I tried pouring the ACV/water combo in my hair but I was trying to avoid pouring it over my scalp per other user's trial & error. I ended up dipping as much of my hair into the water mixture as possible (thankful that I had put it in a regular cup to do so. I then poured the rest over my hair from the nape of my neck down, took a wide toothed comb and combed it all through. I was actually amazed at how easily my hair cooperated. Normally I have issues with this step using commercial products. So I let the salad dressing...err..vinegar water.. stay in my hair while I continued on with the rest of my shower routine.
After all this was done, I thoroughly rinsed my hair, out, stepped out of the shower & combed through again, amazed that when it would normally start to tangle immediately, my hair was behaving itself. I decided to let my hair air dry and though I've read that some people's hair dried quicker, I did not notice this for myself.
As I have read multiple times, there is a time around 2-5 weeks that the hair basically wigs out on you (pun totally intended) and the oil production in your hair increases, because it can't figure out what it's supposed to do anymore without the stripping effects of the chemicals it had to compensate for. However, with time, patience, and hats, you'll eventually get to the other side of it, and your hair will be healthier, shinier, and stronger than ever before.
Today, I've already noticed a slight difference in my air dried hair. Although it is still poofy, it is not actually as bad as it usually is. Maybe it's all in my head (yep, another pun) but it really did feel like there was a slight difference in the quality of my hair. At the very least, it certainly wasn't worse that with my usual shampooing, so there is something to be said for that. I have had my hair go from normal to dry & brittle in just one washing if I am forced to use certain brands outside of my 2 usual brands, so to have my hair feel great after this, well it makes me want to definitely say farewell to the cost & damaging effects of conventional hair care products.
As for the smell, one of my other great fears in this project, my daughter's nose is very keen to the smell of vinegar-poor girl hates it but I use it everywhere! When asked to give my damp hair a whiff, she said "Smells like wet hair-I expected it to stink!"
As my weeks progress, I will give more details as to the condition of my hair, as well as taking a look into what shampoos & conditioner companies are really trying to sell us. If this works out well, I plan to try & convert the entire family *Muah ah ah ahhhh* into Baking Soda/Apple Cider Vinegar cleaners like me.
In the mean time, I've been reading up on home made deodorant, and I'm just about out of my main stream brand....
I will be trying this!
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