Giving Up Shampoo...

OK, I know you must be thinking, is she nuts? Your next thought may be, yuck. I must admit, when I first ran across a couple of articles that spoke about giving all those “luxurious” shampoos and conditioners, I thought it was a crazy idea. Especially since, I have very fine, long curly hair. I must admit, I didn’t consider this a possibility, until I read the Crunchy Betty’s blog titled” No Poo To You Too” and the posts of others who took up the challenge. I ask myself, what did I really have to lose? Most people have bad hair days from time to time. I have bad hair days most days. I have for years thought that, in order to control my curly mop, I needed to wash and condition my hair daily to keep it manageable. I never gave over processing a second thought. 

I have spent so much money on deep moisturizing treatments and expensive shampoo. The answer may have been very simple all along, stop using those cleansers and chemical moisturizers all together. I have tried the sulfate free shampoos and conditioners. Those seemed to help my dried out, curly locks but my hair still looks frizzy on most days. Heaven forbid if I brushed my hair after letting it dry naturally. When I do brush out my hair, Papaw calls me Roseanna. I am not sure your age but if you watched Saturday Night Live back in the 80’s, I am sure you know who Roseanna, RoseannaDanna is. 

So, I have decided to take the Crunchy Betty challenge and stop using shampoos all together. The Crunchy Betty’s blog features articles to encourage folks to seek out and use all natural, herbal ingredients and to work toward living a more chemical free life. The blog issued a challenge to its’ readers about giving up shampoo and using a cleansing method for your hair of baking soda and an apple vinegar rinse. I thought, after all these years of struggling to get my hair to a desirable condition, what did I have to lose? I finally decided, I was going to give it a go. The Crunchy Betty blog suggested it was wonderful for gals with the naturally curly hair that tended to be frizzy, which seem to describe my hair completely.

So, tonight, I gave it a go. I mixed up the 1 Tbsp of baking soda to one cup of water  and washed my hair in it. I thoroughly massaged my scalp with the mixture but not rubbing much of it into the ends of my hair. I didn’t have apple cider vinegar make the rinse with for the ends of my hair, as the blog suggested. Papaw was going to pick me up a bottle when he ran out to the store this evening. Even without having the vinegar mixture to rinse the ends of my hair in, I was so surprised at how clean my hair felt. It was even more of a surprise when it it wasn’t that difficult to get a comb through it. Normally, I would use about ¼ of a cup a heavy moisturizing conditioner after a shampoo and leaving a small amount in my hair after my final rinse. Combing out would still never be easy, even after leaving in a good amount of conditioner. My hair tangles so easily that I have so much breakage and damage.

I allowed my hair to air dry as the blog suggested; however, I never could put a blow dryer to it anyway. It felt very stiff as it was drying and felt very clean. After it was completely dry, it did feel a bit softer.  My hair needs to be trimmed to get rid of some split ends and I will be getting Papaw to trim my hair this weekend.

I am posting this before photo. I must admit this photo was taken on a better hair day for me, bah hahahaha, this is what I considered a good hair day. I will post a few photos and update the progress again here in a few weeks.

I am going to stick to this, if I have to break out all of my bad hair day caps and roll my hair up into the dreaded bun, until my hair adjusts to this change.. From all that I have read, it could take 6 to 8 weeks before a notable and desirable change of my hair takes place. I just hope I truly can stick it out. 

Check out the Crunchy Betty blog. She has wonderful, herbal natural beauty tips, treatments and remedies on her blog. She also has many followers that have put her concoctions and formulas to the test and share their results. She also seems to really research her blog content before posting and gives good information.With all my dabbling with herbs and oils over the years, I love it when I run across a blog that is so into creating herbal and natural solutions for our health as well as our home. I am an avid stalker of the Crunch Betty blog. On the No More Poo post, she gives the measurements of baking soda to water and the acv to water ratio. If you take up the challenge and give it a try, please send me an email. I would love to hear about your experience.

Hope you all are having a great week. Many blessings to you all!