Kickin' the Bottle

All right, it's confession time.  I'm a closet hippie.  I secretly have this desire to live on a farm with all of my closest friends, with cows and chickens and a large garden.  (As long as I don't have to touch or even get close to the chickens.)  I think it would be cool to work together to provide for each other.  Somebody could teach the kids (not me), somebody could cook, somebody could sew our clothes, etc. etc. etc.  Am I crazy?  I also do things like can fresh produce, make most of my own cleaning products, use coconut oil for everything, I've used cloth diapers and I stopped washing my hair.  Yep, you read right, I don't wash my hair.  With shampoo, that is.  When I first started looking into this no-poo phenomenon I read a ton of blogs by other people who had done it and that's what gave me the courage to try.  So here I am posting my story of kicking the shampoo bottle habit so maybe somebody else will decide to give it a go.

I'm no scientist, but here's my understanding of why we should even stop using shampoo in the first place.  I'm sure you've all heard about all the chemicals and nasty stuff in shampoo.  But at the very basic level, shampoo seems to strip our hair and scalp of all the natural oils our body creates.  In response, our body produces more oil, so we need to shampoo more often and the cycle continues.  Instead, I've started using baking soda to wash my hair.  It has a very low pH level so it doesn't strip my hair of oil, but it's deodorizing and "scrubby" so it cleans.  After I wash with baking soda I use apple cider vinegar as a sort of conditioner.  It detangles and makes my hair shiny, I don't know why, I just know it works.

So here's how it went for me.  I started looking into it about a year ago but was very hesitant to try it because of the transition period.  I read this transition period could last from 2 weeks to 3 months in which your hair could be greasy and nasty.  I just didn't see how I could go to work and church with a greaseball head!  Finally this summer I decided to try it during my girls trip.  I figured at least I would be on vacation with girls that would love me even if my hair was nasty.  I took hats and scarfs and headbands expecting the worst.  On that trip, my hair wasn't that bad and I figured this was going to be way easier than I expected.  Even the next week wasn't so bad.  After that, though, I noticed a nasty greasy feel to my hair as if it just wasn't getting clean.  It looked pretty clean, it didn't smell, and it held a curl like no other, but it had a funny texture I wasn't fond of.  At this point, though, the itchy scalp and dandruff that had been plaguing me since I had my 2 year old had disappeared.  I figured it was worth it even if the texture was a little funny.  Another month down the road, I still had the weird texture and decided to wash my hair with shampoo.  It was amazing, it felt so silky and smelled so good and I thought I'd probably just give up on the no-poo thing.  BUT, the next day my hair was limp and lifeless and my scalp started to smell.  You know, that smell you get when your scalp is oily and dirty?  I had been going 4 days in between washing with no smell.  So I persevered.  All in all, after 3 months of transition, my hair turned a corner.  All of a sudden, I have that silky hair back, no weird texture, I wash it every 4 days with the baking soda/apple cider vinegar and my scalp is not itchy or flaky.  AND, I don't use any product.  No mousse, no straightening cream, no gel.  No nothing!  I was a slave to product before.  I am SO happy with it!

Here's how I do it.  I have a squeeze bottle in my shower I use for the baking soda.  I put about 1 Tablespoon of baking soda to 1 cup of water, mix it together and pour it in the squeeze bottle.  I squeeze it all over my head, making sure to get underneath and then I scrub.  This is very important!  Scrub, scrub, scrub until every inch of your scalp has been scrubbed.  This is mainly for your scalp, I don't even try and get it all the way down my hair.  Then let it sit for a minute.  Rinse.  I keep a spray bottle with straight apple cider vinegar in the shower.  I spray it all over my hair and then comb it through with a pick.  Leave it on for a minute and rinse well.  Yes, it smells!!  It even smells a bit when your hair is wet, but the minute it dries the smell disappears.  I promise!  That's it.  It's cheap, it's chemical-free and it works. I hope you decide to try it!