Tuesday, December 6, 2011

No poo? Not for me, thanks

Have you heard about no poo? No, I’m not referring to toilet habits but to shampooing. Some folks are forgoing shampoo or switching to specialized hair cleaning products that aren't shampoo, either for the environment or to improve the condition of their hair.

I could never see myself embracing this idea entirely because I’ve got oily hair. As oily hair goes, mine’s not the worst case in the world—you wouldn’t look at my hair at the end of the day and think “gee, let’s harvest that to solve the world’s oil crisis.” But it’s meant I need to wash my hair every day. I have some friends, including my best friend Kerry, who have dry hair and can gleefully skip washing their hair for days on end. Or at least they can skip a day. I’ve always been a little wistful about that because washing and drying my hair takes more time than the rest of my morning routine put together. I have a lot of hair and even though each piece isn’t thick, there’s so much of it that drying it generally takes about 20 minutes.

Recently I’ve been on a big kick to get out of self-imposed ruts. These ruts include things like only wearing super bright pink polish on my toes, wearing my hair only parted on the right, or not trying on clothing I’ve decided will look horrible on me while it’s still on the hanger. So this fall I’ve bought and used a dark purple nail polish (still not entirely comfortable with that color yet), and I’ve tried on a cowl neck shirt even though I was positive it would look awful on me (I was wrong and I got the shirt). Yesterday I decided I would try not shampooing my hair.

I put my hair up in a clip, took an otherwise normal shower and followed the rest of my morning routine regarding clothes, make up and so on. I was tickled to gain the extra time normally devoted to fixing my hair.

And that’s the end of the positive report. Even though every other bit of me was entirely clean, I felt ultra greasy all day long. Plus my hair, which normally looks good when it’s put up, just looked nasty. Or maybe that's the greasy feeling affecting me. All I know is that this morning’s shampoo never felt so good.

Can you skip days for hair washing? If you can, then know I’m a tiny bit jealous. But I’m not jealous enough to try that again. At least not for another 10 years or so.

4 comments:

Jeanne said...

When my hair was longer and I pulled it back, I washed it every other day. Now that it's shorter I tend to wash it every day.

Ron has a bit he does about how he gives real pain to his sham friends and champagne to his real friends, real poo to his sham friends and shampoo to his real friends...

FreshHell said...

I have the same issue. Oily hair. It's also thin and fine so while I never have to blow it dry, ever, I have to wash it every day. Back in my high school and college days, if I was planning to go out late at night (at a club, for example), I'd have to wash it a second time so that it stayed clean into the wee hours. The situation's not quite so dire anymore as I've aged but I still have to shower and wash my hair daily. But! my hair routine involves washing and a comb. Nothing more.

KD said...

I actually tried going without once. I would rinse and/or condition every day or two, but I held my ground and didn't use shampoo for over a week. I can see this working for me but convinced I need to have one of the products MADE for this. Disclaimer: it was summer, and I had no job or big events to attend risk was minimal. I will NOT try this again until I've a long vacation ahead, or occasion to wear ball caps as needed.

edj3 said...

I'm still jealous you can skip days.