No 'poo, homemade sea salt and lemon hair and head scrub.

So it's been about 3 years since I stopped washing my hair and went no 'poo (no 'poo is short for no shampoo!).  I don't really miss anything from my shampooing days, except for a salty, scrubby shampoo from Lush that made my hair soft and amazing.  

Lush's Big Shampoo contains sodium laureth sulphate which makes it unsuitable for no 'poo haircare routines.  SLS is a know skin irritant, pollutant and can permeate your body and stay in there (urgh!) so I avoid it.  Lush's shampoo also starts a nearly £7 for a little pot - my DIY version is cheap, vegan and natural.  And it smells amazing! 

You will need

Coarse sea salt

Lemon juice

Essential oils (optional) 

How to make no 'poo hair and head scrub

It's super simple, just mix the sea salt and lemon juice together.  I don't really measure it, but I'd say start with roughly a tablespoon of each then add more juice or salt as needed until the salt is soaked through but not dissolved.  If you want to add some essential oils add a couple of drops now and mix them in.  Essential oils are optional, but both lavender oil and tea tree oil have anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties, so if you're head is a bit itchy it could be a good idea to add them.  You can also add lime juice, or swap the lemon juice for lime if you prefer a limey smell.   

Should I add a disclaimer here to say if you have any cuts or owchie bits on your scalp perhaps give this a miss, lemon and salt will be too stingy! 

How to use your salt and lemon hair and head scrub

Make the scrub in advance then jump in the shower and wet your hair.  Scoop up a handful of hair scrub and gently massage it into your scalp.  Repeat until your whole scalp is covered and smooth the rest through the lengths of your hair.  Leave the scrub in for a few minutes then rinse out thoroughly. 

I use it about once a month or so.  It will give you a happy scalp and the soft, floofy hair of your dreams.

Do you have any no 'poo hair tips?

Check out my other 'no poo posts too, 

Wash your hair with aloe vera

1 year of no 'poo 

And more no 'poo here 

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No 'Poo, My New Shampoo. Washing your Hair with Aloe Vera.

Let me introduce you to my new shampoo.

Yup, it's an aloe vera plant!

I read about using aloe vera as shampoo on the internet (I think in this excellent blog post about natural no 'poo alternatives) and decided to give it a try.

It's the easiest thing in the world, just snap off a leaf, wet your hair in the shower, squeeze the gel out of the leaf, and massage it into your scalp.  I try to leave it for a few moments before rinsing it out.

Using the aloe vera leaves my hair soft and shiny and it seems to help hold the curl in my hair too (I've read about using aloe vera as a natural hair gel, so that makes sense!).

You can read more about my adventures in low 'poo and no 'poo here. 

(FYI - low 'poo means using less shampoo, and it's less extreme version of going no 'poo, which means using no shampoo.  I've worked my way up to no 'poo over the last year or so, I haven't used my sls free shampoo bar for a couple of months, and mostly I wash with water only, sometimes with aloe vera, or apple cider vinegar)

Would you ever stop using shampoo and start washing your hair with leaves?

Low 'Poo, an Update 1 Year on.

I can't actually believe it's been over a year since I started experimented with going low 'poo.

FYI - low 'poo means using less shampoo, and it's less extreme version of going no 'poo, which means using no shampoo.  

You can see all of my low 'poo blog posts here.

So, how's it going?  

It feels pretty normal by now to be only washing my hair once a week or so.  I used a natural, SLS free shampoo bar and rinsed with diluted apple cider vinegar, until Christmas when my shower broke a bit.  Since then I've been washing my hair once a week in the bath (confession, sometimes I only have a bath once a week.  No one seems to have noticed this in the slightest!  Perhaps I'm going low soap too!).  

I just swoosh my hair in the bath water a bit (I use a tiny bit of Lush bath bubble bar in the bath water, I don't know if that's cleaning my hair or not, makes it smell a bit nice though!), massage my scalp and rinse with a couple of jugs full of clean water.  I generally skip the shampoo bar and vinegar unless my hair feels really grimy (then I add shampoo) or really dry or dull (then I add vinegar).  I still use either almond oil, or coconut oil as a leave in conditioner after washing.  

I've washed it with bicarbonate of soda (the traditionally recommended no-poo option) just once in the last year.  I can see how it works, as it made my hair really fluffy and soft and got rid of a big greasy-patch that was annoying me.  If you google 'no 'poo' or 'low 'poo' you see a lot of people saying that using bicarb and vinegar ruined their hair, which I can believe.  I read some tips from the blog Lulastic, about using very diluted bicarb, very occasionally, which works great for me.

I'm really happy with being low 'poo, my hair is really shiny and feels healthy.  

Are you low 'poo?

Going Low 'Poo, an update.

After about 2 months of doing Low 'poo hair care, I have got the hang of it.

This is what works for me - 

Washing my hair once a week (ish) with solid shampoo and an apple cider vinegar conditioning rinse.

Washing my hair with plain water once or twice a week(ish).

Dampening my hair a little in the shower then combing it through, or dipping my brush in water while brushing my hair.  This makes it go curly and nice.

Using a little, tiny bit of almond oil smoothed through my hair after washing, as a leave in conditioner.

I have discovered the importance of a good hairbrush.  I found I need a really good one to distribute the oils in my hair effectively and make my hair less greasy.  Surprisingly, the best brush I've found for this is my £1 Primark, bright pink paddle brush.  It makes brushing my hair really easy and feels really nice and massage-y on my scalp.  I have broken 2 Kent Coolhog hairbrushes during this hair experiment (previously my favourite type of hairbrush).  

I have had to experiment with a few different hair styles, to deal with greasy days or just 'meh' hair days.  You can see in the photos above, I've been doing a lot of twisty things and a 3 bun hairstyle I learned from here.  I've been doing a lot of pigtails, plaits, and half up half downs too.  It's been good to learn some new hairstyles that don't give me a headache (anything too tight or with too many bobby pins gives me a migraine!  And I have monstrously thick hair, so putting it into an up-do is hard!).

I haven't had to use an intensive conditioner on my hair at all, in over 2 months.  I just haven't felt the need for it.  My hair used to be so dry I would have to do a hair mask with coconut oil every week.  I'm a bit scared if I put coconut oil on my hair now it would never wash out, or it would somehow disturb the balance my head has developed now.

You can see the first and second parts of my low 'poo adventures here and here.

Are you shampoo free or low 'poo?  Any tips?

Going Low 'poo, Weeks 3 to 4.

Here's an update on my low 'poo adventures.  You can see the start of my no hair washing experiment here.

Week 3 - I upped the amount I brushed my hair and it seemed a bit happier.  It was actually quite shiny.  It looked most unhappy when I just wake up, I move about quite a lot in bed and I wake up with it matted and in crazy shapes every morning which take a bit of brushing out.  I seem to have less dandruff, which I used to have quite often before.

Week 4 - It's greasy again this week, which I think was caused by my using a bit of my lush solid conditioner bar on my hair.  It was a bit dry and fly-away so I thought the conditioner would help, apparently my hair disagrees.  I have only washed it one other time this week, with the solid shampoo and vinegar.  As the week went on, with lots of brushing, it felt less greasy.  It was really straight after not getting wet and bring brushed a lot, so I started dipping my brush in water while I was brushing it, which seems to have brought some curliness and bounciness back to my hair.  Yey!

It seems to be getting a bit better.  Brushing it often seems to be the key.  I shall update you again in a few weeks.

Has anyone else tried this?

Going Low 'Poo. Weeks 1 and 2.

Just before Christmas I decided to go Low 'Poo.  

Here are some definitions for you in case you think I'm talking about something toilet-related!  No 'Poo means no shampoo, washing your hair using only natural substances, usually plain water, or bicarbonate of soda and vinegar.  Low 'Poo means using only shampoos that don't contain nasty-chemicals on your hair.  Google it if you want to know more, there's lots of info to read online.

Recently the Lush Karma shampoo bar and Jungle solid conditioner I'd used for years stopped working for my hair, I was fed up with it looking horrible so I bought some cheap bottle shampoo and conditioner from Aldi, which made my hair lovely and shiny again.  My routine was to wash it 3 or 4 times a week, towel dry, comb through with a wide toothed comb then smooth a bit of almond oil through as a leave in conditioner. 

But I didn't like the strong smell of the Aldi shampoo.  Or the fact it came in plastic bottles.  Or the fact it had lots of nasty chemicals and SLS and parabens in it.  And then I remembered that the Lush shampoo and conditioner had SLS's in too.  And then I decided to try something a little more natural. 

Here are some photos of my hair before.  I have thick, curlyish, shoulder length hair cut into layers. It tended to be nice and wavy and bouncy just after I washed it, then the waves and curls would gradually drop out the 'dirtier' it was.  I only ever brushed it right before I washed it, because brushing it would make it all frizzy and static.  It was nice and shiny too.  (I'm missing my old hair now I've started thinking about it!)

These are recent photos...

And these are of a very young me (there's one of me at my school leavers prom, doing the macarena, with enough hair gel to set my hair solid!  Others show my baby hair, how it looked when I used to slap the frizz ease on and when I had my hair super duper, waist-length long!  It was a lot curlier when I used to put product on it to hold the curl, I wonder if there's something natural I can replace that with...

Now I use this eco friendly, made in the UK, fair trade, SLS-free solid shampoo and apple cider vinegar as a conditioning rinse, or I wash it with plain water.

I'm still trying to work out the best method for me, I'm not sure yet how often I should be washing it and stuff like that, I'm working it out as I go along...

Week 1 - My hair was quite happy for the first week.  I washed it twice, with the solid shampoo and vinegar.  My hair doesn't smell like vinegar - hurrah!

Week 2 - I had a few of days of greasy hair, not just greasy at the top, but greasy all the way through the strands of my hair.  The worse bit is right in the middle at the back of my head, it is grease city.  Urgh.  My hair was flat like a pancake and I was most unhappy.  My scalp was really itchy too.  I washed it once with shampoo/vinegar and a couple of times I gave it a rinse and a bit of a head massage just with plain water while I was in the shower, which made it feel a bit better.  While my hair was still wet I put a little almond oil on, as a leave in conditioner.

Here are some photos of my hair during the start of it's low 'poo journey...including some crazy morning hair in photo one, and photo three of very flat greasy hair, which is what I mostly had.

Have you ever gone no or low 'poo?  Any tips?

Linking up with Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.