No-Poo Update- I haven’t used shampoo in over a year!

Hey y’all! Its been forever since I posted about my “no-poo” journey! (No-poo= no shampoo, for those who are new!) SO many people expressed interest when I officially quit shampoo, so it was a very popular topic on my blog! I’m sure some people probably thought I became a weird hippy or something, but surprisingly, the response to my posts about no-poo was very positive and met with lots of interest and curiosity from others who hoped to do the same thing. That really surprised me! It has now been about 1 year and 3 months-ish since the last time I used shampoo! Read below to see what I’m doing for hair washes now, how often I wash, how I get through bad hair days, and how my hair has improved in the past year!

“No-Poo” In A Nutshell:
For anyone who is completely unfamiliar with no-poo and wonders why on earth someone would want to give up shampoo, I’ll explain!  Using shampoo strips your hair of its natural oils that are there to condition your hair and keep your scalp moisturized. When we strip our hair and scalp of this oil, we produce even MORE oil to compensate. Your scalp is just trying to help you out, after all! 😉 When your scalp overproduces oil, it causes your hair to look dirty, making you wash your hair again! Its a vicious cycle. The more you clean your hair, the faster your roots will become greasy again. It also makes the body and ends of your hair even dryer. This is why stretching out your hair washes is so helpful in getting healthier hair! Instead of washing away the greasy roots, you can spread that oil down your hair to the dryer ends by using a natural bristled brush, or even your fingers! The oil our bodies produce for our hair is the best conditioner money can’t buy! Its so helpful to spread out those oils to moisturize your hair. This also moves the oil away from your roots so they don’t look dirty.
Shampoo contains lots of unnatural chemicals that have been linked to so many health concerns- I won’t even get started with that, but its bad! Since stripping your hair of its natural oils makes your  hair very dry, most people will use conditioner or other hair products to make their hair soft again. Conditioners also contain lots of harmful chemicals, including silicones. Silicones are plastics. Conditioner coats the strands of your hair with the silicones to make it shiny and pretty. This makes many people think they have healthy hair when in reality, they do not.
Frequent shampoo-use and hair washing is actually a relatively “new” practice! (In the grand scheme of things.) Think about what people did before shampoo was invented. Do you think everyone just had greasy gross hair all the time? Of course not! Infrequent washing makes your scalp produce *just* the right amount of oil that is needed to keep your hair conditioned, soft and healthy.

Why Did I Quit Shampoo?
All the chemicals found in shampoo and conditioner caused me to look into the “no-poo” movement. I wanted to steer clear of those kinds of products. I try to live a pretty chemical-free lifestyle, so finding a shampoo alternative was big for me. Other reasons were that I wanted to get healthier hair. For the longest time my hair was so unbelievably dry, course, and frizzy. It would break off all the time! I shampooed my hair every day for most of my life, which really caused some bad damage to my hair. I wanted that damage to go away! A few perks of quitting shampoo are that it saves you a LOT of money (no more buying hair products!), and it saves you lots of time! My hair is SO low maintenance now, I don’t do much with it at all, which is awesome.

If you’re very curious about this and want to learn even more, please check out my previous posts all about “no-poo”! (Find them all HERE!) Its not easy to get started, and it takes a good long while before your hair and scalp to get used to this and adjust accordingly, but it is SO SO worth it to me!

My Hair Routine:
It took me awhile to get into a routine that works for me, but I’m so happy with my hair routine now! Normally I just wash my hair once a week on Saturdays, but recently I figured I can go longer. Recently I went 2 weeks between washes with one dry shampoo “wash” in between. So far its working out fine! Last Saturday I had every intention of washing my hair but we ended up making last minute plans so I had to push it back. I ended up using dry shampoo (I use arrowroot powder for this) to make my hair presentable to go out. After using the dry shampoo my hair felt fine and very soft and I didn’t feel the need to wash my hair so I figured, why not go another week. 😛
When I DO wash my hair I use soap nuts! They’re an actual nut that grow on trees in India. I’m not making this up I promise. The shells of the nuts contain “saponins” which is just like a natural soap- It gets bubbly and everything! I boil a few nuts for about ten minutes, strain them, and use the liquid to wash my hair. It works as a natural water softener too which is perfect for me because we have hard water that is awful for hair!
After a wash I can usually wear my hair down for 3-4 days without it starting to look dirty. Towards the end of the week I wear my hair in ponytails, braids, or messy buns to hide my roots. At the end of the week if I don’t wash my hair (like this past weekend!) I’ll apply arrowroot powder as a dry shampoo. Arrowroot powder is very similar to cornstarch. Since I’m blonde, the white powder blends easily into my hair. I apply the powder to my roots with a makeup brush and kinda “scrub” it in with my fingers. The powder absorbs excess oil and gives hair a little refreshment! I brush my hair very thoroughly after applying the dry shampoo and any excess powder gets brushed out. Very simple!
I still style my hair with heat, but I usually only curl my hair once a week. My hair holds curl very well! Especially since quitting shampoo! My hair tends to hold curl even better than before, and I don’t use any products to keep the curls in place. When the curls loosen up my hair just looks wavy, but prettier than my natural waves!

How My Hair Has Improved:
As I mentioned before, my hair before I started all this was very problematic. I could never wear it natural (without putting a ton of random products in it!) I had to curl or straighten it and I rarely wore it down. I washed my hair daily and had pretty greasy hair by the end of the day. The underside of my hair was particularly bad. I could never wear my hair half up/half down, because the half down part was so damaged. It was coarse like horse hair and would break off. I actually had a few little sections that were shorter than the rest from it constantly breaking! It was soooo bad. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit how bad it was, but whatever. I also used to always wash my hair at night because sleeping on my hair helped flatten some of the frizziness down. I wouldn’t dream of washing my hair in the morning because I would be a giant frizz ball all day.
Now? I still get dry ends sometimes, and some flyaways here and there but that is the worst of my problems. The underside of my hair is *almost* as nice as the top layer now which is a huge accomplishment to me! I could get my hair wet in the morning and not worry about becoming overly frizzy!  My hair is softer, holds curl longer, and grows faster! I’m so thrilled with it. I can’t wait to see how my hair continues to improve as I continue. I love the minimal amount of time I spent on my hair! It is so low maintenance its ridiculous! It takes very little effort to do my hair now and  I couldn’t be happier about that!

Would you ever consider quitting shampoo? Do you think I’m a bit crazy? Have questions about no-poo or my hair routine? Let me know in the comments!!

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