I’m back on shampoo.

I know, I know.

It’s weird having such clean hair.

But with the move and the monthlong period of being a nomad, and all the newness coming at me (I’m not good at “new” even when I ask for it), something was bound give.

It wasn’t going to be my carnivorous diet, for dang sure.

It also turns out that hard water + unwashed hair equals a sticky mess. (Seriously. It was gross.)

So what gave was the “no washing with shampoo” routine.

Even with a crunchy seaweed-based shampoo, I don’t love how my hair feels. It’s so dry and sad.

Eventually, as I settle in, I’ll figure out what I want to do next. I can get a filtered showerhead, or rinse my hair with vinegar to counteract the minerals, or stick with shampoo but add a pH-balancing scalp treatment.

In the meantime, I’m a normal-haired person again.

Two months into my no-shampoo adventure, my scalp started feeling pretty healthy. (Especially after I started using a great hairbrush.) Rather than feeling like there was a bunch of grime building up on my hair, my hair started to feel smooth and soft. My scalp has felt more healthy, without weird scaly bits or random sores that used to pop up now and again. It’s been pretty cool feeling my scalp normalize and heal over the course of time.

Sure my hair still looked a bit greasy at the end of the day, but that’s nothing I can’t handle.

But then I decided to get a haircut.

Haircuts typically come with a shampoo, and this was no exception.

Now I’m dealing with a couple different scratchy scaly sore patches on my scalp.

Coincidence?

I doubt it.

I’ve finally figured out the key to a no-shampoo lifestyle with fine hair.

My hair is not especially fine, but it’s very delicate and there’s a deceptive amount of it. This fact is what has led me to a low-maintenance hair lifestyle, because when I start to calculate the effort/impact effects of 40 – 60 minutes curling my hair (only to have it fall flat an hour later no matter what products I use), it’s not worth it.

That delightful feature has also presented a problem in my determination to go absolutely shampoo-free (and everything-free), since my hair shows every single last living drop of oil that’s been spilt on it.

Naturally, there’s an adjustment period for your scalp to rebalance and stop over-producing sebum to compensate from the stripping that happens with modern shampoos. I countered for that by wearing my hair up in tiny buns, and braids, and cute hairstyles like that.

But there comes a time when a girl just wants to let her hair fly free.

After a few weeks, I started wearing my hair down again. On any given day, it might look pretty good after its morning rinse, but by about 3 o’clock it started looking pretty ragged and oily again. Not a cute look.

Then I realized that I needed to be doing more to distribute the sebum down the shaft of my hair. If I’m not going to remove it (with shampoo), I need to disburse it. And where else is it going to go but down my hair?

Last week I bought this boar-bristle hairbrush to do just that. So far it’s been the best investment I’ve made in my hair for years.

1. The extra nylon bristles scratch lightly against my scalp when I brush my hair, loosening dandruff flakes (that get whisked away by the boar bristles) and stimulating bloodflow to my scalp. It feels incredibly good. You don’t need one of those stupid looking scalp stimulators when you just brush your hair.
2. The boar bristles really do help to distribute the sebum and oils down the length of my hair. For a few days it looked pretty gross, but after about a week I’ve done enough brushing that the sebum rinses off easily in the shower. Today is the first day that my hair feels lightweight again, and this is day 6 of brushing.
3. My hairbrush came with a brush cleaner to help remove hair that gets caught in the bristles, and a cute little bag to keep it clean on trips. Already used both of them, both of them are Batfort approved.

Plus, haircare is now a pleasurable activity. I keep my brush handy in my room and brush my hair while watching a Korean drama or reading an article online.

The only downside I’ve seen so far is that my hair is a little frizzier than normal. Hopefully that will calm down as brushing becomes the routine and the sebum settles into a new equilibrium, but we’ll have to wait and see.

As for now, I see myself continuing this no-poo journey into the future.