Well, I made it. It wasn’t exactly pretty, but I successfully lasted five days without washing my hair. [Did you miss the original post about my extended hair washing challenge? Check it out here.] In all honesty, it ended up being easier than I predicted it would be. Yes, my hair was flat out nasty by the end of the five days, but I felt like it was still semi-manageable. Throughout the week I made a conscious effort not to continuously play with my hair so that I wouldn’t get excess oils from my hands onto my hair. I also decided not to use cornstarch at all on my hair…someone commented in my original post that this might hurt what I’m trying to accomplish. The cornstarch would soak up the oil, which might cause my scalp to think it needs to create more oil. I ended up just going crazy and using nothing on my hair at all. Other than that, I followed my plan pretty much exactly, but to recap, here’s what I did.
Sunday night: Washed hair with baking soda/vinegar and then blew it dry.
Monday/Day 1: Wore hair down.
Tuesday/Day 2: The roots were definitely starting to get greasy, but I was able to manage the day with my hair down again. The static was getting to me a bit, so I did end up pulling it back by the end of the day.
Wednesday/Day 3: I knew that I wanted to do my ‘wavy hair’ trick for day three [tutorial here], so on Tuesday night instead of leaving my hair dry in the shower, I got it wet. In fact, I decided to try scrubbing the roots a bit with just water. I thought maybe it would help distribute the oils and make my hair look a bit cleaner. I twisted my hair into two buns so that it would be wavy in the morning. I wore my hair down and slightly wavy all day.
Thursday/Day 4: By day four, my roots were definitely greasy. It pretty much killed me not to wash my hair at this point, but I am determined to make this experiment work! I tried to get away with wearing it down and wavy again but it just wasn’t meeting my (very low) standards. So, I decided to comb through it with a pick and then clipped the top back in an effort to hide some of the greasiness in my roots, and pulled the rest back into a low pony tail.
Friday/Day 5: I woke up with an extra bounce in my step on Friday. I was SO excited that I had made it to day five and I would get to wash my hair soon. Monkey had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and the thought of going out in public with such greasy hair made me gag…so I decided to pull it back into two french braids. The funny thing is, the receptionist at the doctor’s office actually complimented me on the braids. I’m pretty sure she thought my hair was wet, but I’ll take it! I love that braids help to hide those greasy roots.
I ended up waiting until Saturday morning to wash my hair because we were having family portraits done that day and I wanted my hair to be nice and fresh. But, I used my trusty baking soda and vinegar and my hair was as good as new! Today is now Tuesday and I am on day three of not washing for this week…two more days to go! Honestly, I haven’t noticed much of a difference in the greasiness factor this week, but I do feel like the bulk of my hair is less staticky, which is GREAT in my book. I’m going to stick with this five-day plan for a few months and see what happens. I plan to follow pretty much the same schedule, with maybe adding in a hat as an accessory when I’m feeling really gross about my hair. Hopefully it won’t be too long until my hair gets used to this new plan..maybe I’ll even be able to stretch it to longer than five days between washings? Luckily, I’m a stay at home mom so it’s mainly the other moms in my mom’s group that have to put up with the transition period! And now, I must head out as I’ve got a sick little Monkey to take care of, and he’ll be waking up from his nap any minute. Speaking of, I think my next post will have to be all about him. These last few posts have had entirely way too many pictures of myself for my liking.
Have you extended the days between hair washings? How long did it take you to get your hair to be less greasy? How long do you think I’ll last with this experiment?
