Have you heard about the No Shampoo Natural Home Beauty Treatment yet? For years I’ve heard that girls with curly hair shouldn’t shampoo their hair, they said that you should skip the shampoo and just use conditioner. I never tried it. The idea of not cleaning my hair wasn’t too appealing. Recently I heard about a treatment that cleans your hair and is for any hair type– straight, curly, oily, dry.
3 weeks ago I decided to throw away the shampoo and conditioner (ok really I just tucked them away under the bathroom sink) and give the no shampoo thing a try.
Code Red Hat has a great article on why you should go “No Poo” and how to do it. She talks about why shampoo and conditioner is bad for your hair and scalp (the detergents strip the natural oils from your hair and scalp sending your scalp into hyper drive creating more oils) along with different “no poo” methods that you can use for your hair (making a paste vs a liquid you pour on your hair). I HIGHLY recommend checking out her site as she has all the details you will want to read if your curious about starting the no shampoo treatment.
Why the treatment was appealing to me:
- It’s DIY and being a crafter I’m tempted by anything DIY
- It costs pennies to make
- It hopefully will make my hair luxurious and change my dry hair and oily scalp into a thing of beauty
So of course being a busy mom and a DIYer I did mix things up just a tiny bit from the methods provided on Code Red Hat. The baking soda in this treatment acts as the cleaning agent and the vinegar as the conditioner/detangler. Ain’t nobody got time for doing two separate treatments… so I make a “shampoo and conditioner” in one type of concoction.
The Sew Creative No Shampoo Beauty Treatment Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 2 cups of warm water
- 1 plastic container
Instructions:
- Pour 1 tablespoon of baking soda into a clean plastic container
- Add 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (enjoy the fizzy science experiment that occurs)
- Add 2 cups of warm water (It doesn’t need to be exactly 2 cups. I find that approximately 2 cups is a good amount of solution for my hair. You can eyeball it.)
- Head to the shower. Wet down your hair. Slowly pour the solution over your scalp and hair. Allow it to sit on your hair for at least 2 minutes while you take care of the rest of your shower business.
- Feel your hair. It should be slippery. If it’s not wait for a few more minutes.
- Rinse the solution out of your hair.
Ta da! Your done. Finish your shower and style your hair as usual. Really I have absolutely no tangles thanks to the miracles of apple cider vinegar. When I’m toweling off my hair I usually add a bit of coconut oil to my hair to moisturize it along with a squirt of Moroccon oil.
Will you smell like pickles? LOL. No. The smell of the vinegar rinses away completely. I’ve even had The Hubs and a few friends do the sniff test for me. If you really love the smell of shampoo and conditioner you can add a bit of essential oils to your hair after your shower.
In the Code Red Hat instructions it said that your hair would be a mess for 2-3 weeks as your hair and scalp detoxed from the detergents in your shampoo and conditioner. I didn’t notice this at all… but everyone is different.
You should find that once your hair adjusts to this new treatment that you only need to shampoo every 3-4 days.
It’s been 3 weeks since I last washed my hair with traditional shampoo and conditioner. Here is a photo that I took this morning of Turtle and I. I had yoga class last night and had my hair in pigtails all last night and then this morning so the curl has been pulled out of my hair but at least you can see that my hair isn’t some freaky mess because I haven’t shampooed it in 3 weeks. When I look at my hair in the mirror it looks shinier, feels softer and somehow the color looks more intense. I don’t color my hair so I don’t know how this no shampoo treatment works on colored hair but so far I’m happy with the results on my own head.
In other hair news… I somehow got it in my head that Turtle was in a desperate need of a hair cut and that it needed to be done immediately. For some reason I thought that I could do it on my own. I’ve never cut hair before but pulled out my husband’s electric trimmer and gave it a go. The results were much less catastrophic as I thought they would be. Happy baby, happy mama, and his hair looks better than it did before. 
Please let me know if you decide to go no shampoo! I’d love to hear about (and see) your results!