I sort of stopped washing my hair

So, I sort of stopped washing my hair.

In my longstanding quest to become a crunchier earth mother and/or stick it to the man, I’ve been trying to quit shampoo. This has been something of a shift, since a few months ago, I’d have trouble sleeping if I hadn’t shampooed that day. So that was inconvenient. And, I don’t know, I read a lot of articles on the Internet about how shampoo is actually ruining my life.

The Beginning: Weaning Off
I switched to shampooing only every other day. I felt like a greasy mess every other day, and it was horrible. Liberal application of dry shampoo from Lush, which is actually just corn flour with some citrusy scent. I felt like my head was a greasy tortilla. I did this until my shampoo ran out, probably 2 weeks?

A Step Backwards: Going Homemade
In a misguided effort, I started washing my hair every other day with the homemade body wash I use. This left my hair feeling waxy all the time. I kept it in a ponytail for days as a result, and even when I pulled off my hair tie, my hair sort of stayed in a ponytail. I resembled Severus Snape. Dry shampoo didn’t help. I also tried using watered-down Dr. Bronner’s, which didn’t help, either.

A few theories on why this was so gross: the coconut oil (yum) in my bodywash was basically just hanging out on my head, or, we have hard water, and I was actually just letting soap scum build up on my head. It was not good. I researched some very expensive natural shampoos in desperation at this point, but I just couldn’t justify buying them. So…

My Head is a Middle School Science Project
Now I’m using the much-publicized “no poo” method, even though I’m still a little nervous it will damage or lighten my hair. I mix ~1 tablespoon of baking soda into a cup of water for “shampoo,” and ~1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into a cup of water for “conditioner.” I sort of squirt the baking soda and water onto my scalp and massage it in, then rinse (a lot). Then, I squirt the vinegar throughout my hair and rinse it out? My hair looks surprisingly okay, much like when I was using shampoo, actually. I’m doing this every other day but trying to lengthen the time between.

I’ve been using this blog as a reference, one of the few Asian women who’s written about going no poo. Thanks, friendly stranger!

And here, we firmly believe in pics-or-it-didn’t-happen, so here are some photos of my hair ~24 hours after a baking soda/vinegar wash.