I Haven't Washed My Hair in Nearly Three Weeks And It's Never Looked Better: These Are a Few Of My Favorite Things

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I thought for sure after not washing my hair for 18 days I'd be posting selfies that look like this:

Or like this:

So imagine my continuing surprise that after avoiding all shampoo for longer than most of my romantic relationships have lasted, my hair looks like this:

Look at all that freaking volume! Look at those curls! OMG! Who knew?!

Apparently I'm tardy on the uptake and this "no-'poo" thing for hair - especially curly hair - has been around for a long time. The basic theory is that shampoos strip your hair of natural oils, and if you skip that strip your scalp oil glands will be re-trained (!) to not produce so much oil. 

Whatevs, I thought in disbelief.  My hair is curly and I can barely make it look decent with my umpty-ump number of hair products and I really do not buy into this au naturel thing. After 50+ years I've finally gotten into a routine that makes me feel presentable on most days.

But then my friend Babs posted some before-and-after pix of her long dark locks.  Her tresses were noticeably healthier-looking and curlier after weeks of avoiding the shampoo. My skepticism began to crumble.

Here's what I knew about curly hair:  it's dry.  So I've tried over the years to find products that added moisture to - or at least didn't desiccate - my hair. Part of it was decades of trial and error.  A lot of products made my hair feel like straw. I became loyal to Kiehl's Amino Acid shampoo about ten years ago. I sought out conditioners that had some kind of oil as a key ingredient, and had recently fallen in love with Suave Avocado Oil conditioner. (I tried an expensive brand made with Moroccan oil, and another with argan oil - apparently all oils are not created equally.)

But shampoos and conditioners are only part of the equation.  If I could get my hair to be not-straw (yup, I have low standards) all I'd need was after-products to look well-coiffed. So while my shampoo and conditioner search was self-directed trial-and-error, after-products remained a mystery to me.

Enter the Birchbox subscription.  Birchbox is the OG of subscription sampling programs. For a price, you get a monthly box of five sample-size beauty products.  You can't necessarily choose what's in your box, but you can indicate if you're interests include makeup, skin care, hair care, accessories, health food/supplements. If you got a sample you liked, you could then go to the Birchbox website and order full-size products (and since you know I'm a competitive online shopper, I spent a lot of time finding the products I liked at the best price regardless of website; sometimes it was Birchbox, sometimes it wasn't).

Anyhow, with Birchbox I was all about the makeup and the hair care. On the makeup front, there's nothing I found that was so awesome that I purchased and continued using over the years.  But, dang, there are some haircare products I swear by.

The first thing that blew my mind was Hair Rules Curly Whip.

Hair Rules Curly Whip - how do I love thee? Let me count the ways

Hair Rules is a salon based in NYC, and its founder is a Seattle-born hair-whisperer. If you can make hair look good in Seattle with its constant bad-hair-day-guaranteed mist of moisture, you can make any hair look good anywhere. This guy is a go-to for Ebony magazine and in addition to his salon he's got this hair care product thing going on (three cheers for vertical integration). Anyhow, it was divine inspiration that put his sample in my Birchbox. Curly Whip is a leave-in conditioner, and yes, after a shampoo and conditioner I use this leave-in conditioner. My hair is as grateful for this as a wilted plant is to a rainstorm. Similar results too. (Note: because Hair Rules is a small company, their manufacturing isn't done on a massive scale and sometimes I've found that my beloved Curly Whip cannot be found anywhere. So when I find it I buy in bulk.)

Anyhow, even after my hair got clean and moisturized, it still needed help.

Dear Clark Thickening Balm - if you have fine hair you NEED this

This is a freaking miracle worker. In addition to being dry, my curly hair is fine.  Not fine as in 'hey you're looking fine af' but fine as in a fine-tip pen. The diameter of the strands is just plain small. And while curly, the fine-ness of my hair renders it limp.  And limp hair doesn't curl.  So there I am, stuck with hair that's got unfulfilled potential.  Gah.  I've tried mousses and gels and pomades and just about everything short of Something-About-Mary techniques. Nothing had the desired results.

The sample in one of my Birchboxes was actually Dear Clark's Volumizing Tonic. And it was pretty good. And it turned out that Dear Clark is actually a Dallas-based salon that makes these products, so when Birchbox stopped carrying the brand I marched my candy ass to the salon to stock up on the tonic.  Imagine my surprise when I saw more product options.  I asked one of the salonsters what she recommended for my sagging curls and she recommended the Thickening Balm.  I wish I'd gotten her name.  She changed my life. This stuff is amazing. I rub it in my damp hair when I get out of the shower, and when my hair air dries I finger-fluff the crunchies out and voila my hair is puffy and thick.  You can't pay me enough money to not use it. (Similar to Hair Rules, Dear Clark doesn't manufacture products on a massive scale so when I buy Thickening Balm I tend to stock up as if I'm planning for the zombie apocalypse.)

The other thing I discovered through Birchbox is dry shampoo.  A few years ago I went all rebel and decided I'm not going to shampoo every day.  I'm going to shampoo every OTHER day (oooohhhh, so anti-establishment!).  And because wetting my hair on non-wash days meant needing time to air dry and who wants that, I was stuck with bedhead.  I'd splash a little water on my head in an effort to start from scratch without starting from scratch but that usually meant using any time I'd saved by not wetting my hair with trying to get my hair flying in a desired direction.

Enter dry shampoo. It's just enough moisture to let me re-direct the dry, pointed-in-weird-directions strands with just enough drying stuff to let me fluff the roots. (Sidebar: I once got in the awkward situation of having to explain to a manager what a fluffer is. Don't know? I'm not telling. Go look it up in Urban Dictionary. What you learn you cannot unlearn and for that I apologize.) I found a couple brands through Birchbox, but the one I buy is Klorane because they make a version for brunettes - the stuff isn't white so when I use it I don't look like I have dandruff.

Klorane Dry Shampoo - Natural Tint so brunettes don't look like they have dandruff

And you know what I found just a few weeks ago?  Dry CONDITIONER!!! Who knew. So I did some research and the one that got the best reviews for curly hair was Oribe. So I got some and it's fine and all but I feel like it leaves a bit of a white residue on my dark locks. Meh. But I am now fully-prepared for no-wash/no-wet hair days and that's what's important.

Anyhow, I thought my hair was in a good routine, but then I went and got myself all cancered-up. I had two surgeries, six rounds of chemo and 25 sessions of radiation.  It sucked but TBH I was thrilled to get the time off from work.  My boss was THAT bad. True story: she asked me to reschedule a chemo session so I could attend an all-day meeting. I laughed, she assured me she wasn't joking, I laughed some more, reported her to HR and she was gone six weeks after I came back from treatment. SMH. I can tolerate a lot of bs but that crossed so many lines... I digress.

I don't know about you, but more than once I've threatened to pull a Britney Spears and shave my head and start from scratch dealing with my hair.  Well, be careful what you wish for. It would have been cheaper and less traumatic to just shave my head but I went the chemo route. Shrug. 

When my hair fell out it wasn't like the movies where a clump suddenly falls into your dinner plate or you wake up and you've got a tribble on your pillow. It was just a LOT of hair coming out when you shampoo, and when using a brush. My good friend Staci who is a former hairdresser whipped out her clippers and shaved my noggin to save me from obsessively pulling out my hair on my own (which did not hurt BTW). Bald, I look just like my dad. And I found I had a good skull.

Papa Boops, the handsome devil

I had a wig when I was bald but it was a hot PITA.  I sweat a lot to begin with, and add a wig to someone undergoing medical menopause in the North Texas heat and, well, let's just say I didn't wear the wig a lot.  I didn't even wear scarves because I was afraid they'd go flying at the first gust of wind and THAT would be embarrassing. I mostly went bald. If this should ever befall you, go bald.  It's liberating.  And people are so freaking amazing to you.  They offer to take your shopping cart back to the store for you when you've unloaded your groceries. They tell you you're pretty. They offer to help with just about everything. They smile a lot.  In general, when you're a bald lady people go out of their way to be nice.  Except for this one dick who cut in line in front of me at Walgreen's. But other than that I saw the best humanity has to offer. (Sidebar to bald guys: I do not know HOW you do NOT rub your bald head 24/7. It's hypnotic to rub your head and find no hair.)

Dang that was a long tangent. So yeah, I lost my hair and I didn't mind being bald. People were nice and I saved a LOT of time getting ready in the morning by not needed to shampoo/condition/dry/style (or shave my legs or pluck my eyebrows).

But all good things must come to an end and my hair started growing back in late-2012. And I kept it short because I was so delighted with the easy maintenance. (I even stopped coloring it. I hadn't seen my natural hair color in 20 years. There was a fair bit of grey but I was digging the whole natural vibe.) So my hairdresser friend Staci recommended TIGI Manipulator to get a spiky look and I loved it! And I still use it! It gives me just enough extra poof to feel my most confident.

TIGI Bedhead Manipulator - this is awesome for spiky looks or just adding more poof

Fast forward six years. I'm shampooing every other day with Kiehl's Amino Acid, conditioning with Suave Avocado oil, slathering my wet hair with Hair Rules Curly Whip leave-in treatment, rubbing Dear Clark Thickening Balm in my damp hair, using my fingers to break the crunchies then finishing with some TIGI Manipulator to add volume; on off days I'm using Klorane dry shampoo and Oribe dry conditioner. And for the most part it's all good.

But then Babs shows how awesome her hair looks without shampooing AT ALL. And being the adventuresome gal that I am I decided to see if there was any merit to her claims.

Oh  My.  Gawd.

I thought for sure I'd look like a greasy slob after the third day, but I'm kind of feeling like Kramer in that one episode of Seinfeld where he's test-driving the car and it's on empty and he wants to see just how far he can go on E ("I've never felt so ALIVE!").  It's been nearly three WEEKS and my hair hasn't looked better. I wet my hair every time I shower, I slather on my Curly Whip, and do the post-shower Dear Clark Thickening Balm and TIGI Manipulator. And my hair looks amazeballs. Added benefit is a few more minutes back in my morning. (OK I'll also confess there have been a couple days where I've been in a rush and didn't shower - I know, ew - and on those days I used the Klorane/Oribe dry shampoo/conditioner.)

Not only does my hair look great, my scalp doesn't feel gross. I thought with no washing I'd have product build-up and SOME greasy action going on, but nope - I just have follicular pulchritudinousness.

So come join me in the no-'poo revolution! I'll let you know how long I go before breaking down and shampooing.