Introduction "No Poo" week 2 experiment
My last update in the experiment was last Friday, and at that time I had planned to make a deep conditioning paste and / or clean it with baking soda/apple cider vinegar. Let's see what I did, and how it's going now. I'm still not passed the transitioning phase and seeking the best way to treat my hair. Not giving up though! Today I found Dr. Bronner's cheat sheet coming from a Bronner mom :) In case anyone is interested, I left the link to the sheet below the image in the header of this post. I still only used the soap for my hair, face, and body so this may come in handy for me as well.
Week 2 of the experiment
Day 6
Didn't go according to plan, I ended up washing it with Dr.Bronner's soap on Saturday. At first, it felt perfectly fine, I let it dry naturally and it looked fine as well. Here's a picture of my scalp:
Looks really clean right? It felt clean as well. Unfortunately, later on, I tried brushing it again, and even though I have rinsed it long and with care, this time there was so much product leftover in my hair that it drove me nuts. I tried cleaning my brush and comb but apparently not good enough because as soon as I tried brushing my hair it was static as never before. I planned on rinsing it some more the next day or try the baking soda paste. I'm deciding the best approach by the day so I may feel different tomorrow, lol.
Day 7
Today I was doing all kinds of things, except taking care of my hair. I watched some videos about how to proceed using baking soda (the sound of baking soda alone makes me long for something that's biting off the dirtiness lol, don't ask me why). I found this video where this girl explains exactly how much she uses. I thought I should share it here.
My plan is to try something similar without the baking soda, I remembered that the Dr. Bronner's website advised to always use an acid conditioner or if not available, apple cider vinegar. So I now had this clear moment, wondering if I could only use the vinegar after washing with Dr.Bronner's to get the same result. I will try to control myself not to wash it for another day (or 2).
Day 8
The itchiness is really (more like really really) not nice, and I constantly wear my hair in a tail then it's easy to ignore the itching scalp (until I touch it lol). I told myself, wait one more day, just push through it, and so I did. Tomorrow I will finally wash my hair again, it feels like ages only because of the itchiness of my scalp.
Day 9
Finally, today is the day. Yes! I took a plant spray and filled it with about 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, then I slowly filled it with water. I used a spray as I didn't want to end up smelling completely like vinegar and waste all of the product without getting the wanted result. I went into the shower and did my usual (haha, it already feels like the new normal using Dr. Bronner's) washing with Dr. Bronner's. Like the other times, this time ready to use the apple cider vinegar right after washing.
I felt instant relief when I sprayed in the vinegar with water, my hair went from super dry and almost impossible to rinse (therefore I had product residue in my hair constantly!) to smooth and almost as soft as when I used a "normal" conditioner. Wow. I even took the smell for granted because it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.
I let it dry naturally and it felt quite nice!
Day 10
Today I discovered that I still had some product leftover in my hair (damn!) as part of my hair still felt wet-ish in the morning. But, and that's a huge improvement, it was only 1/3 maybe of the other times when I didn't use the apple cider vinegar.
I tried brushing it again (after using a new and super clean wooden brush yesterday) this morning and my hair went from normal to static in 1 second. I checked the brush and noticed it has leftover product in the brush, so I cleaned it again. I do like the brush because it's easier to clean and it also divided the oil in my hair really well compared to those brushes with the dots at the tip of each brush. Those are much harder to clean and therefore I decided to invest in a (hopefully) better hair brush. So far, so good.
Day 11
My conclusion about the apple cider vinegar rinse yesterday is, that I haven't used enough of the rinse and also not enough vinegar. I didn't even finish half of the spray bottle, while it's just a small spray bottle anyway. Once it felt soft I started rinsing it out yesterday, and I assumed that it was enough to get rid of the soap. The days after showed me I was wrong. But hey, this is all a learning process to find out the best way to treat my hair, so I'm just experimenting with stuff. On top of that, I rather start a trial with little product and build it up a bit, rather than using too much the first time. Then I'd still be wasting product imo, because even if something doesn't turn out to be great, I still wait a few days before trying it again with a slightly different approach.
Day 12
I took the apple cider vinegar in the shower including the spray bottle and this time I poured in more of the vinegar and filled the rest of the bottle with water. This time I was determined to use enough of the vinegar rinse and leave it in my hair a bit longer. I decided it's time that I take a bit more time and put in some more effort to make sure the hair in the back of my neck is not forgotten and clean as well. So I spent 10 minutes hanging upside down with my head to make sure there was enough vinegar in my hair there as well. When the bottle was almost empty, I took some more minutes to rinse everything out, and now it was hoping for the best.
I let it dry naturally, and once it became close to being dry, I noticed there was definitely a lot less product in my hair. Brushing my hair didn't mean it went to static right away, so there's another win, haha. Let's see how it goes tomorrow and the next week. I have good hopes that I can leave another day in between washes (or even more) once I feel I have the right combination of soap/vinegar.
That's it, my second update, see you in a week or so :)
Have a good weekend!