Transitioning from Shampoo, Part 1

My hair has been four to five inches longer than it is right now in the past, but for the most recent several years, I haven't been able to grow it out. As soon as I get some length, it's dead and I need to cut it off to keep my hair healthy.

Because of this, I decided to try to us zero hair product, aside from coloring every 6-8 weeks, and see if maybe that would help. There's a whole philosophy behind not using shampoo, and it's explained all over the internet, so I'm not going to do that here. There's a lot of good information, documentation, and an explanation of why on this lady's blog.

Like her, I decided I was going to try to use only water. I'm not ethically opposed to shampoo; if I wanted to clarify my hair, I'd just use shampoo. My experiment was to try to use only water and see if I could get my sebum production down to normal, and have that condition my hair. I decided to give it eight weeks and see what happened. We're just about half way through.

Four weeks ago, on March 21, I colored my hair and used coconut oil on the tips instead of the conditioner that came with the color. The reason I did this was that I knew the color had stripped my hair and I did not want to put product on top of it again. When you wash with just water, it can't strip the silicone or something, it's been a long time since I read it. Anyway, I wanted to start with clean hair.

The coconut oil was interesting. I think I used too much and it coated too much of my hair shaft. I should have just dabbed it onto the ends. As it was, we had some rare dry weather in Austin and my roots and associated hair had static electricity, but the ends did not. It was weird.

I waited two days then went in for a cut. I had her shampoo but not condition my hair, and put no product in it. Please excuse these pictures. I haven't really documented it except on Snapchat with my crappy phone camera. You know, toddlers and such.

Right after the cut.

I bought a boar bristle brush and made it two days before I felt like I needed to use that to try to coax some of the oils down from my scalp to the hair. It was fine. I could tell that there wasn't as much oil at the scalp. It actually wasn't as awful as I thought it would be, because usually, I have to wash my hair every other or every third day at the least.

Toward the end of the week, I started searching the internet for "dirty" hairstyles. I learned a couple of things: 1) The models in those tutorials have clean hair. 2) And/or, the models in those tutorials have thick hair. I found a couple that worked okay for me.

After that, I pretty much used the boar hair brush every day. I also got a bamboo comb.

On March 30, after a week, I did my first water wash. It was *SO MUCH WORSE* after I washed it! I think I didn't scrub at the scalp enough, and it was just clumpy and icky. Two days later, it started calming down a little bit. The third day, though, I used my "dry shampoo" for the first time: 1 part cocoa powder (since my hair's dark) and 1 part corn starch. It seemed to lift the roots a bit, so that was nice. Plus it smells gently of chocolate.

This was probably my favorite style. It was easy and looked fancy. I actually pulled out earrings, too.

Okay, so this next picture... I was illustrating the difference in thick hair and my fine hair. First, I took the picture with my phone's "real" (outward-facing) camera and, gosh, the quality is so much better! Anyway... Here's the tutorial that shows what it's supposed to look like. Here's what mine looked like.

It doesn't cover nearly as much scalp as the other picture. Because... I don't have *that* much hair.

For the second water wash, I "scritched" a LOT, and spent some time in the shower really scrubbing and trying to pull the oil through my hair. Oh, I'm also doing the last rinse in cold water, so... brr. This time, my husband was home, so I had time to blow dry the roots before we headed out on vacation.

Everyone says, "I can't even tell!" but I think that in this picture, you can totally tell. Of course, it was also the day before the third water wash.

Basically, now, my hair's not super oily, like I thought it might be. It's just different. And I don't like it. It feels like there's product in it, like if you sleep with conditioner in your hair for a good, deep condition. Only in this case, it feels like I didn't rinse it out. I brush my hair and it looks okay, though a little oily at the roots. Then later, it calms down at the roots but the next six to eight inches seems to glop together, and it makes little cracks and holes in my wig, if you know what I'm saying.

I am definitely going to give it eight weeks to see if the oil spreads all the way through and my scalp stops overproducing sebum, but if it is no better than it is today, I might go back to shampoo. Then again, I'll probably need to color it again around then and that should strip everything. Hopefully it won't send my scalp into overproduction again, or we'll have a vicious cycle I can only battle with soap.

Today, for the first time, I hot-rolled my hair. I haven't used these curlers since Mal was born, and it's literally 100% humidity, but at least it gave my hair a little lift.

The last time I washed was Friday morning, and so I'm still the better part of a week away from washing it again. Or "washing" it again. Stay tuned for Part 2, coming in a few weeks...