My hair, just like my skin, is incredibly oily. It requires being washed everyday with quality shampoo. If the shampoo is not quality my hair would get oily before the next mornings shower! As you can imagine, I was a bit nervous about trying other methods of washing my hair.
Shampoo
I use a bar of pure soap (both Ivory and Dr. Bronners have been tried and worked well). Lather up, scrub, and rinse.
Another Shampoo Option
Boil water and baking soda (1 – 1.5 tablespoons of baking soda to one cup of water) until the baking soda is completely dissolved. Be careful – baking soda will bubble and fizz when added to boiling water. Allow it to cool and then use a funnel to put the mixture into several old shampoo bottles. To wash your hair, simply drizzle the combination all over your scalp and hair. Rinse out.
I chose not to use this method for one main reason: it takes longer than my simple soap routine. I try to get ready as quickly as possible because I have so much to do before leaving for work and to save water. The baking soda method required lots of careful scrubbing to make sure that this watery mixture got all over my ENTIRE head. It ended up taking a long time and required that I make it every few days.
This post is a part of Frugal Fridays.
Your baking soda method sounds unnecessarily complex to me… I measure 4 TBsp of baking soda into a 32 oz spray bottle, then fill up with hot water from the tap. Shake until dissolved, and it lasts my husband and I for 2-3 weeks of use. He uses it every day (and prefers it over shampoo!) and I use it 2-3 times a week. The spray bottle made all the difference for us, because it easily penetrates to the roots, and if you spray on dry hair, you can immediately tell where you’ve missed a spot. It also takes a lot less of the mixture than pouring it from a shampoo bottle.
This method of baking soda sounds about compatible to your bar of soap method — I’d never heard of that, hmmm!
I used to have trouble with oily hair, much like yours sounds. I wouldn’t even wash it the night before lest it get too oily by morning. But using baking soda and tolerating 2-3 months of over-oiliness (head scarves are wonderful things) has me down to only washing every 3rd day or so. The best way to describe it is that my scalp has been ‘retrained’ by the build-up of oil to not produce so much oil. I wish I could get it down to a once-a-week wash, but oh well.
I was just happy to retire the blow-dryer from 20 minutes of use per day!
I am thinking about trying the soap method. I have tried using baking soda before (when I read about it, they recommended just taking a little baking soda and mixing it with water to make a paste in your hand and then applying it) but my scalp ended up feeling rather sore afterwards. Has anybody else had trouble with their scalp after using baking soda?
That’s interesting! I know when I was growing dreadlocks I was using Dr. Bronner’s but my hair was EXTREMELY oily. When I removed the dreadlocks and used the shampoo it still didn’t work on my hair that well. I’ll have to give the baking soda idea a try! Anything is better than what I’m using!