More on my hair treatments

Since my last update on my hair on April 10th (read it here) where I was at war with my scalp but loving my hair I have been in love with both amazingly. I think the hot coconut oil treatment I did really helped even everything out and let me basically start fresh. The conditioner/treatment thing we put on our shower seems to help with the soap scum issues I was having with baking soda washes. My routine since then has basically been a once or twice weekly baking soda wash with an apple cider vinegar with rosemary essential oil rinse. (read about my no poo start and recipe I use here) I think the rosemary helped some too with my scalp. Things have been going great and no real issues.

I used up my coconut oil last week and was really not wanting to buy more (for the reasons I discuss in my last post about hair, link is above). I read around and apparently shea butter is pretty good to use on hair too and I have been wanting to get some to use on my skin as well so I decided to go that way. My hair has been really dry recently and the idea of a thicker moisturizer really appealed to me. I bought a glass jar (yay for glass jars I love reusing them for other things) of handcrafted shea butter with lavender and mint essential oils from Alaffia. It is not organic but it is fair trade, the organic option was in a heavy plastic jar so I was leaning towards the glass. Shea butter is a lot thicker than coconut oil and it is a bit harder to work through my hair than oil but it is not difficult, it also seems to moisturize a bit better.

Last week I noticed my head was getting flaky again and yesterday after I showered it was HORRIBLY flaky and it hurt. It felt tight and cracked and sore, not very itchy though. So last night I gave myself another scalp oil treatment, this time I opted for grapeseed oil. After I applied it I tied up my hair and slept on it to let it soak in. I also looked around for some other treatments I could use and made myself a thyme tea to use on my scalp. I used 1 tablespoon of thyme in 1/2 a cup of hot water, it smelt great. I let it cool and covered it and put it in the fridge.

I then thought about making some sort deep conditioner or something for the length of my hair since it has been so dry and the season is changing and it is only going to get worse with the cold dry winter weather. I remembered how much my hair seemed to like the flaxseed wash I tried a couple times (read it about here and here) and decided to make a batch and use it just on the length of my hair since it doesn't do so good with the scalp and I didn't want to end up with a weird greasy patch like before. I made a batch, 1 table spoon of whole flaxseeds in 1 cup of water brought to a boil and then simmered for at least 5 mins. To this I also added a bit of clove and a 1/4 stick of cinnamon. It smelled so good, I strained the mixture into a heat safe container that I had a chamomile tea bag in and another tea bag of lavender. I let them steep for a bit and then took them out, let the mixture cool and covered it and put it in the fridge to be used in the morning.

This flaxseed wash is AMAZING as a once in a while wash for you hair. It makes my hair dry so quickly and it makes my natural waves come out in full force. It also seems to brighten up my hair a bit too, clove is suppose to highlight red so that could be a factor too but I didn't use cloves last time and it looked bright then too. The grapeseed oil and thyme tea rinse also seemed to help my scalp a lot. When I showered in the morning I massaged my scalp thoroughly then continued massaging while I used my normal baking soda wash. Followed that with the thyme tea rinse and more massaging and rinsing. That was followed by using the flaxseed wash on the length of my hair and a thorough rinse. As it was drying I worked in some shea butter to the length and then just left it alone.

The color and texture and look and EVERYTHING of my hair is amazing today.

Just look at it:

It took very little effort, the only effort was making the mixtures, which was not difficult at all.

I am definitely going to add a flaxseed wash back into my routine, maybe once or twice a month, I am also thinking of buying some shikakai and trying that as a wash instead of baking soda. The baking soda works but I would like to try and find something different. I read about shikakai on the no poo livejournal page I always fall back on for loads of information on no pooing. Apparently it is used just like baking soda to make a wash, it is also rather cheap like baking soda is, I found it available on amazon. Hopefully I can keep the love going and have trouble free scalp and hair.

Hair and stainless steel cleaning.

Don't worry I am not using hair to clean stainless steel, I'm just talking about a few different things in one post.

First my hair. I have not used the flax seed recipe again because that nasty sticky-ness on my hair was pretty gross and I am pretty sure it did come from the flax seed wash. My next hair washing I just rinsed with apple cider vinegar(ACV) and after that the nastiness was gone. I think there was just something with the way it interacted with my scalp or something. My roots were not that bad it was at about ear level that just had a ton of goop on it. My hair also got kinda frizzy and HUGE again afterwards. I would brush it and it would be like when I was using conventional shampoo. It's too bad because I really did like the mixture and it was pretty simple and more appealing to me than ACV. I think I might make another batch and use it just on the length of my hair and not near my scalp or roots and see what it does and then use an ACV rinse. I do think the flakiness of my hair was from the peppermint, which was also in my flax seed wash so no more peppermint for my head.

Currently I am cooking up a batch of sugar "wax" to try out on my armpits. My hair grows at a ridiculous rate to have lovely hair free pits I would need to shave twice a day and every time I have been shaving lately I have gotten annoying and a bit painful ingrown hairs so I do not want to shave my pits anymore. I know "sugaring" them will hurt but it will be a burst of pain versus a few days of an annoying ingrown. I wish I could just not shave but I do care too much what people would think of hairy pits. I was first intrigued by sugaring thanks to Crunchy Chicken, and also found a few more places with it. What I am doing right now is boiling up one cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons of water, and two tablespoons of lemon juice to hardball candy temp (250 F). I am having a bit of difficulties one because I just plain suck at cooking even if it is not food. I already had it boil over on me and two because the small amount I am making my candy thermometer doesn't actually immerse in the liquid. I don't want to make more than I will use especially since this is the first time I am trying it and I don't have much sugar on hand at the moment. So we will see how this goes.

Last night I was determined to clean my stainless steel coffee mug. I was not tasting any nastiness but it was awful to look at. The inside had all sorts of rings from levels of coffee where I apparently took breaks between drinking and the mug has a lid (that I never use) so coffee builds up on the part the rim snaps onto and it was just all around dingy. I had tried a lot, lemon peel with salt, vinegar, baking soda, in all sorts of combinations. It would get the same stuff that soap and sponge would get but still leave all the nasty stains from the coffee and tea. So I googled something like coffee stains in stainless steel mug and got a bunch of ideas. The first one I tried I did not think would work because it seemed too simple. Most were simple but included using products I did not want to use, bleach, oxy clean, other things I stopped using long ago, even though I still have all of them because I stopped right away not when the product was empty. So the first I tried was dishwasher detergent in cup with boiling water and let it sit. I don't currently have a working dishwasher but I do have a few different kinds of detergent under my cabinet. One store brand generic liquid detergent, one little sample pack of cascade that was in the dishwasher when we moved in and a box of Planet brand detergent. I used Planet of course and just tossed enough to coat the bottom and a bit of the sides of the mug and then poured in boiling water. I covered it with a random lid and went to bed in the morning I looked and the mug still had all the stains, I read that someone did this and when they woke up there was a brown film on the top of their mug because it had all come off overnight, I was a bit disappointed but I decided it might have loosened the stuff a little bit so I grab the toothbrush I keep at the sink for cleaning dishes and with barely any pressure all the stains started to come off. I probably could have dumped the soapy water and gotten all the stains off with just a quick rub of the sponge. I could not believe how clean the mug was. It was so shiny and spotless. I was amazed. I am currently trying this on a pot I use to make popcorn that has a bit of a stain from the oil. Just checked and the pot is already clean and shiny. I am going to have so much fun cleaning now. I get really excited about cleaning when I learn new and simple things. Now I just need to figure out how to get the rust stain out of my bathroom sink without using extremely harsh chemicals. I have tried all sorts with that too.

Flaxseed hair wash

Just got out of the shower from my third hair wash with the flaxseed wash I made, thought I would update. (I'm not going to put any links in this post so you will have to go to the one below to get any details, I'm being lazy)

I highly recommend using some sort of squirt bottle you can squirt the stuff onto your scalp. Especially if you have thick hair like I do, it is pretty hard to actually get it onto my scalp and not just have it slide down my hair.

My second wash wash not so bad, didn't have a squirt bottle yet so I wasted a lot of it again because I couldn't get it to stay on my scalp. I also didn't rinse very well apparently because my roots felt like they had a lot of heavy goop on them. Was not visually noticeable, but it just kinda felt like I had over done a leave-in or something. Not really a big issue with me since my hair is so thick and coarse, I kinda like when it is weighed down, but I was not able to run my fingers through it so it was kinda gross.

It does not feel like that now, although now that it is drying a bit and if I flip it and feel around it does kinda feel like it has a residue on it still. I wonder if this is more of a transition thing and not actually from the wash since it is not a form of soap or cleanser really like even baking soda was. It at this point is not enough for me to stop using it. I think I will give it a few more weeks at least to see if this is a transition, I did not go through a transistion when I switched to BS and ACV.

It does not feel like this in the actual shower, when I go to rinse my hair it feels great and soft and manageable, I actually say wow and I never talk in the shower or even think for that matter. As it dries is when I start to feel the weighing down. I would think that since it is only on my roots it might just be my scalp oil not the actual wash and especially since I did not feel it the first wash. I coat the ends of my hair just as much as the roots with the wash so I don't know why it would only feel weighed down there, it has to do with my natural oils. (Yes I am thinking "out loud") I made sure to rinse really really well this time and I don't really see how I could have not rinsed it well enough.

I am out of wash and am going to make a new batch. I think I will add lavendar and maybe some tea tree or something, or perhaps just do a tea tree rinse before hand, I am getting kinda flaky and I do go though spurts of it but it is much less than what I stated in previous post.

On a hair note but not related to washes I learned how to do two new "do's". They are ridiculously easy and gorgeous if you ask me. I learned rope braiding and hawser braids. I learned them from tutorials on youtube.com, ok I'll put in some links: Hair tutorials by torrinpaige.

I found her tutorials through the long hair community on livejournal.com.

Here are pics of my hair in these two styles.

Rope braids

Hawser braids

No poo and the rest of my hair care routine.

No poo is the way to go for me, but I have made a few changes. If you wanna know what I was doing check out my previous blog on it. Since I went no poo my hair has been growing like a weed. It is currently just about below hip length. I don't know if it is actually growing faster or if it is no longer all frizzy and kinked up on itself. After washing it now it looks like it use to after I would apply pounds of gunk and straighten it. But most importantly I can brush/comb my hair without it turning into a two foot wide ball of hair, even before oiling it, seriously it was really bad before I use to NEVER brush/comb my hair.

I did up the amount of ACV a bit, made it more conditioning. A few weeks ago I stopped using BS and just doing an ACV rinse. I did this mostly because I have hard water and soap scum was a bit of a problem. I also have been having problems with flakes, but I'm pretty sure that is due to my face soap or something because it is only around my hairline. It is not noticeable due to the fact that I have really thick hair and the color hides flakes amazingly well too. Or perhaps it is from the peppermint essential oil I had been adding since mid-December. I made a candy cane sugar scrub as gifts and had a lot of left over peppermint EO.

I looked around the The no 'poo method livejournal community, my intial go to source for info on going no poo, and came across this post and decided to give the flaxseed recipe a try. I boiled the flaxseed with cloves and infused that with chamomile and peppermint, it's basically what I had on hand. Here is what I ended up with:

Its consistency is like egg white so the container I have it in is not the greatest. I had issues with getting it out and staying on my scalp but will have better luck next time because I know what to expect.

I was also going to try lavander but the store was sold out last time I was there, I will probably try different things with subsequent batches. It was fine, nothing new to report versus BS/ACV. My hair seemed to dry a bit faster and it did seem to be a bit more bright in the red department but that just could have been an effect from being clean not the cloves, which is suppose to have red highlighting affects, it had been a while since I washed my hair. Here is a picture of it an hour or two after the flaxseed wash, pretty much looked like this after BS/ACV wash too.

I have my hair in two pony tails, the side on the right (my left) is flipped to try and show how the underside is a lot frizzier than the top side.

After I wash my hair I wrap it up loosely in a towel to get most of the excess moisture out and then comb it with a wide toothed comb and then air dry it. When it's mostly dry, not my roots, they take FOREVER to dry, I oil my hair with coconut oil. I got my oil at the local health food store and just bought food grade, they also had a tub in the beauty section but it was a lot more expensive for a lot smaller amount. Here is what I use:

I use a heaping 1/4 teaspoon for each side of my hair, I put it in two pony tails to oil it and only oil from hair band down. When I'm done I un-do the pony tails and use a tiny bit of oil on the hair that was above the bands, mostly to tame the little face framing fly aways that I am plagued with. Now that I say that I realize that this is the MAJOR difference in no 'poo'ing for me, the face framing fly aways were my main enemies and they are rarely on my mind these days. I don't even use headbands very often any more.

Here are more pictures of my hair in various stages of oiling.

Right (my left) side oiled and other side not oiled, yet.

A Close up of the oiled side, so shiny.

Both sides oiled.

My hair down after oiling and combing again.

The pictures really don't do justice to the effect that the oil has. The close up of the oiled bit is the best at showing how calm and great my hair looks after oiling. The oiling also works great as a detangler too. I have read that coconut oil can cause acne but my face has actually cleared up a lot since I went no 'poo but I did also change my skin care routine as well but at the least it is not affecting me that way.

I have to warn that this is probably not the ideal way to use oil for everyone. I know if my husband did this he would be a giant grease ball but he also is not a no 'pooer. There are somethings I just can't get him to do. A lot of people use the oil as a pre-wash conditioner. They put the oil on an hour or so before washing, some do it overnight, and they get similar results after they wash their hair of the oil. My hair has always been extremely dry and I have never had any oily hair issues. If your hair is thin and/or oily it might be too much to use coconut oil as a leave in. I don't want anyone to try this on my recommendation and end up with flattened down nasty greasy hair and curse me, although you can curse me anyways I'm use to it, hehe. My hair is a bit greasy seeming sometimes after oiling but after a few hours it soaks in and looks great till I wash again. I only wash twice a week at most and even between washings I do not get my hair wet like some no 'pooers do.

Also no 'poo doesn't work for everyone either. Even before no 'poo I would only wash my hair twice a week. I would have done it much less but it would start to smell. Since no 'poo my hair does not seem to grab on to smells as much as before. If you are the type that needs their hair washed everyday or it feels nasty to you and even perhaps looks nasty then it might just not work for you or you would go through such a drastic and long transition period that it just might not be worth it for you. When switching to no 'poo you are kinda re-training your body into taking care of it's self and not relying on something else to do it, kinda like kicking any bad habit, luckily this worked for me, unlike me trying to kick coffee, totally not worth it for me. So don't feel bad if you try and it doesn't work or if you don't even want to try.

Well that cured my boredom for a bit hope someone finds this useful, interesting, or whatever.