The 'No Poo' Craze

I love gettin' in on the craze.  Going without shampoo (no poo,  as the cool kids call it)  seems to be all the rage these days.  Even though I'm not really a 'rage follower'  I say it's about high time we stopped using shampoo.  And if we all followed this trend,  imagine what would happen.  We might have clean drinking water.  We might not leave an ocean full of plastic for our kids to clean up.  AND..... We might have better hair...gasp.

The truth is we do not need to shampoo our hair and we don't need to condition it either!  I hear a chorus of naysayers whining "but if I don't use shampoo everyday my hair is a slithery slimy mess."  Well,  maybe that's BECAUSE  you use shampoo everyday my naysayer friends.  God created us wonderfully and He designed our scalp to create oils that nourish and repair our hair.  When we use shampoo we wash those oils away with harsh chemicals that dry out our hair even more.  We then need conditioner to coat our hair with oils basically to hide the damage that has been done by the Shampoo.  After a day or two,  these conditioner oils and our natural scalp oils mix together and create the slithery slimy mess that makes us use shampoo again.  It's the never ending soda.

If you are still not convinced,  please read this post by someone who can explain it a lot better than me.

So,  the first step.... Stop using shampoo!!!  that's simple enough,  except not really.  Our poor little scalp has been mistreated for such a long time that it is used to spitting out WAY too many oils in a futile effort to stop the madness.  Our scalp will continue to spit out way too many oils until it is finally convinced that we won't use shampoo again.  This will take awhile (like six weeks or so)  Don't give up.  Buy a nice hat.
Wash your hair with a paste made from baking soda and water as often as you need to.  This actually does clean your hair quite well. If you need to condition use a mixture of 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar and 1 cup of water.  Stick with it,  your hair will do some crazy things while it's adjusting.  In the end you will have the hair you never knew you had.  For instance,  my frizzy poodle top is gone and now my hair is just curly, maybe  only wavy.

If the baking soda thing doesn't work for you (which it doesn't for everyone) please read crunchy betty's alternative.

This was shared at Things I love Thursday at thediaperdiaries.net, Your Green Resource Thursdays, and Simple Lives Thursday.