Natural Hair Care

Having a family goal of saving money and using more natural products has led me to some strange places, but one I'm actually enjoying is natural hair care. I have long hair, and I don't use anything on it like mousse, gel, hair spray, etc. I used to use just shampoo and conditioner, every other day. However, I suffer horribly from dry scalp and flakes. My mom-in-love suggested I go to a no-shampoo method. I had tried once before, following the curly girl method (though I'm still not too sure about the plop!). I didn't like the way my hair looked using CG. My m-i-l reassured me that this was different. I was skeptical, but I thought I'd give it a try. So here we go.

I used a mixture of baking soda in water instead of shampoo. I wet my hair as usual, and right there in the shower, mixed up about a tablespoons' worth of baking soda with the hot shower water in a cup. I slowly poured it over my head and massaged it in, then rinsed thoroughly.

After my shower, I used a spray bottle and thoroughly sprayed my hair with vinegar. I only had the regular kind, so I used that. Oh vinegar, what a tangy smell you have. Truth? It made me crave some salt-n-vinegar chips...

Anyway, I was able to use my pick to comb my hair with very little tugging, so the vinegar did the job of de-tangling well enough. It took about half an hour for the smell to dissipate, but eventually it vanished, leaving me fresh smelling hair.
Now it's a day later. This is usually my skip-it hairdo day, during which I *might* brush or pick it out, but usually just ponytail it and call it good. Today, though, my hair feels very soft and is not tangly (unusual!) so I have left it down.

(don't laugh at my admittedly laughable self-portrait skillz)

So far, so good. My head hasn't itched, which means this method hasn't made my dry scalp act up, I haven't had any yucky flakes, and my hair's not tangled. I'll let you know how this goes.

(and money-wise, you can't beat it...a tablespoons' worth of baking soda is about $0.03 worth, and even using a thorough spritzing of white vinegar is not even $0.01 worth! So 4 cents per cleansing, 15 times per month, approximately, and 12 months per year is about $7.20 per year!)