Since my husband and I got together nearly 11 years ago he's been calling me a hippie. At first because I am a vegetarian and all mushy and gooey about being nice to animals and saving bugs from the house and putting them outside.

As the years have passed I've gotten more and more "hippie" for lack of a better word. But I think my newest adventure takes the cake.

I'm not washing my hair. *Insert whispers and funny stares*

Well, actually I am, but not in the traditional sense. A couple of weeks ago I wrote this post Nature Powered Skin Care, and spoke about my awesome new face stuff that helps maintain my natural oils in my skin instead of stripping them. This is the same reason hairstylist tell you to go as long as you can in between hair washes. When you shampoo your hair you are washing the dirt and product but also stripping your natural oils from your hair. From this your body goes "hey we are missing something up there, start producing oil!!!!" Thus, making your hair greasier and greasier each time you skip a wash day. You've gone into over oil production mode trying to make up for the lack there of on your scalp. This is why I only wash my kids hair when really dirty from say ice cream in it or like once every 1-2 weeks. *insert more whispers and stares*

Sooooooo, No shampoo? No problem. I've researched a little bit about going natural with hair washing and it is so simple it's worth a try. Maybe even once or twice a month as sort of a reset if it's not your thing all the time. No crazy ingredients you need to run to the health food store and cost you a fortune. It's literally baking soda, apple cider vinegar, water and bottles to hold the stuff.

I used an old conditioner bottle for the "shampoo" mixture and a spray bottle for the "conditioner".

Shampoo:

Couple of tablespoons of plain old baking soda. ( my bottle is an old Dove 338 mL so scale to your size)
Fill remainder of bottle with water.
Shake and put on the scalp. Here try and keep it to the scalp, avoiding putting it on the ends of your hair. Leave a minute or two and rinse. First time I tried this was mixed in a mason jar for cuteness. Yeah that doesn't work well. Use something that you can kind of put specifically on the scalp in areas, such as a squirt bottle or old shampoo bottle.

Conditioner:

1 part apple cider vinegar
4 parts water
Shake and spray onto all of the hair. Leave for a few minutes and rinse. The vinegar smell DOES rinse away. :)

The hair will not feel sleek and shiny most likely after your normal conditioning regime. I even used a tiny bit of leave in conditioner just on the ends. I imagine eventually over time the natural oils work there way to the ends of the hair and this will not be a necessary step.

I have this awesome Wet brush that I bought like 6 of for in my house. It will brush through any wet hair, even crazy knot filled toddler hair (dry or wet) without pulling and children screaming. As a licensed hairdresser I get them directly from the professional hair distributors for like $12 but they should be under $20 in a salon. Worth it. Buy some.

Style your hair as normal. I did notice it takes a bit longer to dry your hair, but it is crazy soft. The ends are very soft and have none of those dry fly aways. I barely had to straighten my hair. The top is not greasy exactly but not that super clean feeling after stripping it. Again I imagine this goes away after time. I will update with another post after its been a while.

So I did this 5 days ago. My hair felt a little like straw on the ends, but I think I had to much baking soda. I've read you need to adjust to your hair. A bit of trial and error. The next day I washed with normal shampoo and conditioner, because it was my birthday and I just wanted to feel pretty and was worried it would look yucky halfway through the day. I normally wash my hair every second day. Well yesterday would have been a wash day, but I already noticed it wasn't that bad and wasn't itchy. I know you know what itch I mean. The one that makes you wash your hair before you go to the gym itchy.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Jen