NoPoo
posted on Aug 29, 2008
For forever I was using Head and Shoulders followed by a random shampoo and a random conditioner. My hair would only feel clean for a couple of hours—and my scalp would get itchy in about two days.
I found an article on NoPoo, or No Shampoo a few months ago, and have been wanting to try it out ever since because of the promise of healthier and cleaner hair that you don’t have to wash every day—some people can go weeks without washing their hair. I didn’t get around to it until last weekend.
Simply what you do is work a tablespoon of baking soda mixed with a cup of water into your hair. Then you let it sit for a little while and then rinse it out. Then you can take some apple cider vinegar and leave that in your hair for a while and rinse that out. I did that, and it did not work. My hair was very dry but still felt somewhat greasy and it looked really dull and flat. I knew I was doing something wrong but I didn’t know what.
So I read a few more articles two nights ago and found out that if you have hard water instead of soft water then the baking soda plus the hard water will leave soap scum on your scalp. So I drug my fingernails over my scalp and yeah—the stuff under them was definitely soap scum and whatever else was left over from the shampoo and conditioner I was using before.
I got two water bottles, distilled white vinegar, baking soda, and the apple cider. I mixed a half cup of the white vinegar with a half cup of bottle water. I mixed 1 tablespoon of the baking soda with 1 cup of the bottle water. The apple cider vinegar was already in a little bottle.
I got into the shower and worked the white vinegar mix in my hair and it felt really good—it felt like shampoo normally does, just without the lathering. Then I turned the shower on and rinsed it out and put the baking soda in. I really scrubbed my scalp and rubbed it to get everything I could off and then rinse it out. When the baking soda rinse out my hair felt really strange—like all the moisture and whatever else was out of it. The apple cider vinegar took care of that though. The articles say that you don’t need to use the apple cider vnegar all the time and you don’t need to use white distilled vinegar all the time but I think that I’m going to have to.
I dried my hair and combed it out and it felt amazing. The cleanest my hair has ever been I think. That was two days ago and my hair still feels clean. I’m having a bit of dandruff and that kind of itches but there’s absolutely nothing else on my scalp still. My hair doesn’t smell like anything really except hair—it’s really weird. No flower scents or whatever. My hair is also really soft and it’s shiny.
I’m probably not going to have to wash my hair again until Sunday. The local Renaissance Faire is this weekend and I’m sure I’m probably going to get sweaty. If I wasn’t doing the Renaissance Faire then I could maybe not wash until Tuesday.
This is so awesome. I very highly recommend going NoPoo.
