No shampoo, week 11: hard water epiphany
I declared success a few weeks ago and had to issue a retraction several days later. This time, I've definitely discovered a key to life without shampoo. It's all about the water.
You know how some people say that their hair is soft and clean after using baking soda and vinegar, while others of us struggle with excessive oil for weeks? It's not just about how oily your hair was to begin with. After a weekend at a hotel, I am absolutely convinced that the effectiveness of baking soda hinges heavily upon whether you have hard or soft water. In the hotel, the baking soda dissolved into the water, giving me super-soft, almost slimy water that left my hair clean and soft, and my scalp feeling wonderfully refreshed.
Back home, I was still struggling to keep the gritty baking soda suspended long enough to distribute it through my hair, and I was dependent upon egg shampoo to keep the oil under control.
On a hunch, I finally decided to try take a reader's advice to add the soda to boiling water first. It fizzed like another science experiment (what's in our water?!) and I waited a few minutes for it to cool. Perfect! The soda was dissolved, the water was slippery, and my hair was clean, soft and silky again, just like in the high-dollar hotel water!
HOW TO WASH YOUR HAIR WITH BAKING SODA IF YOU HAVE HARD WATER:
The boiling seems like a lot of trouble, but it's really not. It only takes about 1 cup to do my hair, and I can make it ahead in larger batches. I use it about 3 times/week, so it's not hard to make a whole week's worth at once:
- Heat one quart of water to a boil in a large pan.
- Turn it off and add about 1/2 cup of baking soda.
- Stand back and wait for the fizz to go down, then let it cool.
- Pour into a squirt bottle and keep in the shower.
- Use a bit like conditioner: just work it into wet hair, gently massaging scalp, then rinse thoroughly.
- Follow with apple cider vinegar, as usual.
So now, after 11 weeks, I finally really like my hair without shampoo. It's soft and shiny, and my scalp feels clean and healthy. Styling is different too. I don't do much with my hair, but I do wear it in a clip most of the time. When I was shampooing daily, my hair was too limp and slippery to stay in the clip unless I put it up wet and left it in place all day. Now, I can change it as much as I want and it obeys happily.
My hair stays nice and clean for 2 days, but I'm trying to adjust toward 3 days. 3 days now are far different from how 3 days used to be. My hair used to disgust me after more than 24 hours. I didn't want to touch it, and I certainly didn't want to see it down. Now on the third day, even when my hair is getting oily, it still looks shiny and healthy, feels soft and my scalp is still clean. It's a subtle difference, but it feels like a huge change to me.
i love no pooooooooooo
Just kidding. I still hate the term. I just like not using shampoo.
Related posts:
- No Shampoo, week 7: getting old
- No shampoo, week I-Forgot-How-Many
- No shampoo, week 5: Success!
- No Shampoo: week 3
- No Shampoo, week 8 1/2: Let the mockery begin
Did you enjoy this post? Subscribe so you'll never miss a new post!
Filed under: crunchy stuff
Is that a take off on Po’s line in Kung Fu Panda? “I love kung fuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”
lol. You got it!
that great that it is working out for you now!
Its always great to find out what the real problem is behind something.
Did you get the no poo idea from longhaircommunity.com? I LOVE their site!
PS first visit here. It looks fun.
Has it helped with the dandruff? I have trouble with that and have to use head and shoulders all the time. I would love to get off of it….but we have really really hard water also and I am not sure if no poo would work well for us….
Appreciate your updates!
Yes, it has helped a lot! That was one of the biggest reasons I tried, and I’m so glad!
I was just composing my no shampoo post and came over to link to your egg wash post. Yep, I’ve now been there done that.
I’m going to be posting about my success. I too love no poo!
Blessings,
Kimberly
Rinsing your hair with water with lemon juice in it works too. That’s what I do with my all natural shampoo. And it smells nice.
This is good information. I gave up on the no poo thing because my hair did much the same thing yours was doing. It just seemed to be getting oilier, not less so. I think I’m going to try it again. Thanks for the tip!!
Yea! Yea! Yea!
Kim,
thank you for sharing your ‘no shampoo’ experience and advice!
I washed my hair for the first time today following your tips for hard water and the result seems good but, as you wisely wrote in your previous posts, results come with time.
Have a nice week end!
I am going to have to try this hard water trick. I am on about week 2 and my hair is so nasty, I can barely stand it. I have been shaving my head for 3 years (scalp issues) but have not since August, so it is now covering my ears and brushing my eyebrows and neck.
Here is my question. Do your girls use shampoo or are they doing the “no poo” also? My 5yo has hair about her mid back, and my 2.5yo has a serious rats nest in her hair, not even long enough yet to pull into one ponytail, ALL the time (even post brushing). My girls play outside ALL the time and their hair is very dirty a lot (especially when 7yo brother is “doggy-digging” in the sandbox :O ). Will the baking soda/vinegar help keep their hair clean as well, or shall we continue with shampoo for them?
I love your site and the story of your family.
Thanks for posting about your journey of no shampoo you insprired me to try it and it has been working great ! I don’t have oily hair so that has not been a problem for me but my mom who has also been doing no shampoo was having similer problems to yours and boiling the baking soda realy helped a lot!
Thanks again.
Love,Tessa
This was a great topic! I went no shampoo a year ago, and I had the exact same problem! (I didn’t even think about the water!) I switched to a solid shampoo that I use without conditioner, and I love it. But armed with this new info, I might give it another go.
Thanks!
I don’t quite understand about the baking soda. One of the reasons I thought to try this is that baking soda *softens* hard water. We’ve had extremely hard water in both of our houses over the past seven years, and when my mother-in-law (who believes that baking soda must be used for everything) dumps baking soda into my dishwater, it has always made the water so slippery-feeling that I worry about dropping dishes. So I find it odd that the baking soda doesn’t dissolve in the shower water well. (I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m just puzzled.)
Rachael,
I don’t understand the chemistry behind it either, but the soda simply doesn’t dissolve in our cold water. When we try, we get very gritty water. I was really hoping somebody with a chemistry background would speak up.
Maybe eventually someone good with chemistry will pipe up.
In the meantime, I am thankful you posted about this, so I know to boil my water first! (Most other sites just rule out the use of baking soda – or anything else, for that matter – as an alternative to shampoo if you have hard water.) We have company coming in just over a week, and I don’t want to subject them to the beginnings of my experiment! lol So I am planning to try this beginning just after that.
It looks like I subscribed to this thread, b/c I got emails about the comments… I don’t claim to be a chem whiz, but the site I mentioned above, longhaircommunity.com, has TONS of info on hair and the chemistry of it. For one thing, baking soda and vinegar washes are what are called “clarifying” washes, meaning that it takes EVERYTHING off the hair shaft, even more so than regular shampoo does. Sometimes this is useful, but caution is advised. As far as I know baking soda is alkaline as is hard water and too much alkalinity would tend to rough up the scales on each hair shaft (part of how it cleans so thoroughly). If you already have alkaline water, you might want to rethink using baking soda when not necessary. Vinegar and citrus rinses are acid and cause the hair shaft to lie down flat and seal off, but again your water makes a difference as to how much and how often you would use it. I personally use a cheap organic brand of shampoo, but first I do an apple cider vinegar rinse b/c of my hard water. It helps the pH go back to a more mid level and helps the shampoo do it’s job and do it gently. Then, I apply conditioner. After I get out of the shower I will put a few drops of jojoba oil on the end of my hair to help keep it moisturized and a little on the rest of my hair. For the last 2 years, ever since I discovered the “LHC” site and figured out my routine, my hair has gotten MUCH softer and smoother and less tangled. It is really happy now… Everyone has different hair, so if you are really wanting in-depth info, LHC is the place to go, seriously. Sorry for the novel!
LadyCopper, what exactly is a “cheap organic shampoo”? The only ones I’ve found that are free of all the junk I don’t want on my skin are about $2/ounce. If you’ve found something cheaper, I’d love to know about it!
I probably should have been a little less lazy with my word use. By organic I meant did not have such things as sodium laureth sulfate or parabens or ‘cones, not that all the ingredients were organic. Sorry! Many “flavors” of V05 are actually quite free of the bad stuff and they are super cheap. A few Suave flavors are okay, someone I know says Trader Joe’s has good “clean” shampoo for $3 for a normal bottle, etc. I would agree that $2 an ounce is pretty awful and not what I would pay either!
No SLS or parabens would be a *wonderful* start, as far as I’m concerned! I’ll have to check out the VO5. Unfortunately, we’re not close to a TJ’s anymore (waahh; I miss it!), or I’d check there, too. Their mango shave cream is paraben-free and works great.
Thanks!
I loved this boiled baking soda method. It worked great for getting all the built up gunk out of my hair. However, what do you do about the soda crystals that form in the spray bottle? Do you have to reboil it every other day or so? Any help would be much appreciated!
I use a dishsoap bottle, so the crystals aren’t a problem except when they make it hard to get the lid off and on.
Hey Hey!!
I’m just checking out your blog, sounds interesting! I normally use styling gel in my hair, would anyone know if that makes a difference in using baking soda/vinegar for washing? Or perhaps is there a natural alternative to hair gel? Thanks!
I forgot to click “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”
I’m on the same quest…
My hair can be described as very similar to your own. So far what I learned in your excellent series of articles has helped greatly! However… One thing is killing me.
How do you get that nasty apple vinegar smell OUT of your hair after?
I fancy myself a mad scientist when it comes to these things, and I have been experimenting with various homemade shampoos. Anything I use apple vinegar in smells terrible, and the smell just won’t get out of my hair with out shampoo… Something I wanna stop using as it’s killed my hair.
Your comments and advice would be greatly appreciated, and I love your blog!
Marc,
I find that the vinegar smell disappears as my hair dries if I use diluted vinegar and rinse thoroughly. If yours doesn’t, maybe you aren’t diluting it enough? I only use a couple of tablespoons in a cup or two of water.
I’ve also heard that the more expensive brands of apple cider vinegar have a much milder odor than the cheap ones, though I haven’t felt the need to upgrade.
Oh! You dilute it? That explains a lot! I never diluted it. I’m going to give that a shot later on! Thank you so much!
THANK YOU for posting this. I have been no poo since March and love it but, we have just moved to an area that has hard water. I have spent the first few weeks struggling with what to do. I broke last week and bought a bottle of shampoo in furstration and now am going to start over. I can’t wait to tell my husband. and Lady copper. blessings to you for the chem part of this puzzle. Being able to explain and understand it all means tons to me.
As for why boiling works, and I skipped my chemistry class every day in high school so who knows how accurate my judgement is (j/k, my class skipping is completely unrelated), from the wikipedia entry for hard water:
“Temporary hardness is caused by a combination of calcium ions and bicarbonate ions in the water. It can be removed by boiling the water or by the addition of lime (calcium hydroxide). Boiling promotes the formation of carbonate from the bicarbonate and precipitates calcium carbonate out of solution, leaving water that is softer upon cooling.”
…Maybe that explains it? :/
Ever since I stayed at my boyfriend’s house for weeks and enjoyed the wonders of soft water, I’ve been battling it out back here at home. My hair handled hard water just fine for months somehow, then suddenly it constantly looked greasy and I’d find that my fingers couldn’t even move through my hair while washing it anymore. I mix my baking soda with distilled water, so I figured it’s mostly rinsing it out that does the damage. However, I’m glad I found your method and will be giving it a try tonight. Fingers crossed. Going to see lots of people tomorrow. Must get rid of greasiness. XD
Just wanted to let you know, this post inspired our home school science experiment for the week. We got some aquarium test strips and tested our water; it showed 150ppm (“hard”) and extremely alkaline.
Then we boiled the water, let it cool, and poured it through a coffee filter. White sediment was visible on the filter (precipitated calcium?). Upon re-testing, the boiled filtered water showed 75ppm (“soft”), moderate alkalinity, and a slightly reduced pH.
I’ve been reluctant to try non-shampoo methods, knowing that we have hard water in our area. You may have shown us a way to beat it. Thank you!