2.5 years further and considering quitting! help?!

#1

Hi everyone,
I’ve been water only for 2.5 years now and I feel as though my hair has someone suddenly gotten really bad. My long curls/waves have become heavy and flat, my hair is increasingly brittle, the ends split 2 months after being trimmed…

I typically only BBB once/month as my ‘wash’ and sometimes I use a wooden comb throughout the month. I wet it with water a couple of times/week and almost always put an all-natural conditioner/mask on the ends to try and help it not breaking. I also almost always use coconut or almond oil on the ends after wetting it.

Does anyone have any thoughts on helping these problems? Might it be worthwhile to try out an ACV to help with the brittle-ness? Should I BBB more often?? (One of the reasons I don’t do it so often is because I find cleaning my brush of sebum to be a big hassle!! How do people who brush their hair everyday clean their brushes?!)

Any tips welcome! Otherwise I fear this very long experiment of no poo might come to an end because my hair just doesn’t look nice anymore :frowning: :frowning:

#2

Hi! I just joined, because of my own issues, so I can’t help much; but I’ve been cleaning my brush and comb in hot water with baking soda. I just bought a boar bristle brush and a wooden brush with wood bristles and they’re coming with a brush to clean them with. It looks like a mascara wand, but bigger. I don’t know if they sell them separately, but maybe you could clean an old mascara wand and try that. Sephora has wands to test mascara with, maybe they’d let you have one. I am wondering if I can clean the new wooden brushes in hot water and baking soda without hurting them though.?. Also, I’m new, so what does “BBB” stand for? :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks for replying! Don’t live in the U.S. but i will see if i can find such mascara brushes! And the banking soda is a good Idea! I’ll give that a try too.

BBB is Boar Bristle Brush :slight_smile: so when I use it as a verb above, i mean that i do one thorough brushing per month in lieu of washing and i wonder if a more frequent brushing might help. BUT i find Brush washing a pain in the ass…

#4

Hi there,

Don’t be too hasty to get back to the poo! Stay with us…

Don’t be overwhelmed with the brush thing. So many people go on and on about the real brushes, and to wash them specially and all sorts of things that are way too time consuming and difficult. I went no poo for simplicity and less bother!!

I’ve got a plastic $9 BBB from Walmart that’s really stiff. I try (I say try, cause I’m usually too busy) to brush everyday. I brush and then when the brush looks really gluey I pull the hair off and run it under cold water (hot or even warm water ruins the stiffness, even in plastic) I do it at my kitchen sink and put a squirt of dish soap on it. Take your fingers and lather it up scrubbing deep into it for 20seconds. Then I rinse under cold water, hit it on the sink and push it into a towel until it feels pretty dry (as dry as possible). I have my hair parted straight down the middle and with the clean brush go at it again, until all the glue feeling is gone. Sometimes I’ve neglected it so bad that I have to do it again in the evening.

People freak out that you’re still ‘using’ soap. But I still wash my dishes with soap! My life has bigger issues than every drop of soap.

Also, try using castor oil. I’ve heard that for some people coconut oil can actually dry it out as it’s so watery.

For me shampoo doesn’t make life better. Before I had to wash everyday or everyother day, now it actually lasts longer. I simply conclude that this world is not my home and do the best I can. I have long, thin, straight hair, and have been nopoo for 1.5 years. Let me know if you have any questions…

Hopefully that helps,
Hope (my name):upside_down_face:

#5

Hey Hope!

Thanks for taking the time to reply!! I tried washing my brush yesterday with a soap and lather and rinse with cold water and it seemed to work both better and more easily than my old method (soaking for 10 minutes in warm water and using a thin plastic comb to get all the sebum out). So thank you for this!

I’m wondering, though, if you think that brushing more frequently will help with the flatness and brittle-ness. See, I - like you - am a no hastle kind of girl. Before I went no-poo I only washed my hair once week and the second half of the week my hair looked its best. That’s why I decided to go no poo. I thought, ‘if it always looks better at the end of the week why not try going fully no poo to make it always look that nice!’ It took a while to get own regime down pat but now I am on ‘washing’ with a Boar Bristle Brush only once a month, getting it wet 1-2 times/week (more in the summer than winter) and a bit of natural conditioner on the tips when I get it wet. That is a good amount of maintenance for me but if my hair keeps being flat, heavy and brittle then going back to a one shampoo/week isn’t very much more work than my no poo regime.

SO the question is, how can I get my hair to be as wavy/curly and nice as it used to be in Years 1 and 2 of no poo? I know you have straight hair, but perhaps you (or others?) might have some ideas for me? Would brushing it more frequently help??

Cheers,
Talia

#6

You’re very welcome! The only problem I have found with using the baking soda to clean my brush is it leaves a white residue on them. It shouldn’t hurt our hair, I don’t think, but it doesn’t make the brush look great. I’m going to try white vinegar now, and I’ll let you know how that goes. I have read many places that say regularly brushing your hair, especially, with a BBB :wink: is essential to the No Poo Method. Maybe, even more so if you do water only. If your hair is curly or if you curl or style it (preferably without heat, of course) and don’t want to mess it up by brushing it, then massaging the roots with your fingertips is recommended from everything I read. :slight_smile:

#7

That’s interesting to hear that about coconut oil, because I have tried and tried to use coconut oil, but it doesn’t help my hair either! I just keep trying, because of other people’s success with it, but I guess, it just depends on the hair. :slight_smile:

#8

I saw a woman at the car repair shop who had the exact curl that I wanted, and I asked her how she got it. My hair curls only when it’s humid in the summer, and I wanted to take advantage of it.

She told me she uses Palmer’s Coconut Oil Body lotion, and follows up with “Curly Sexy Hair” (blue tube at most grocery or drug stores, or on Amazon), and then scrunches it while it dries.

I wonder if the lotion might be lighter on your hair than the straight coconut oil, and maybe provide moisture without weighing it down.