Hair Raising

 During the pandemic, like lots of others, my hair grew and grew! I quite often in the past have been through times when I visit the hairdresser loads and others when I can't remember which one I visit! I'm lucky with my hair, it's thick and relatively healthy and grows really fast. This means that I can get away with trying different things knowing that any mistakes will grow out quickly!

Time for a few hairy bites then...

Month 9 - Bite 12

I was getting fed up with the amount of time and shampoo my hair was eating into! When I began looking at how much energy it took (mine and that coming out of the sockets) to keep it all looking good or even to get it dry enough to carry on with everyday stuff it was time to claim back some.

I know that going to the hairdresser's costs hard cash, but balanced against the cost of blow drying, styling and the fact that it took so long to deal with a cut was in order. I'm listing this as a money saving tip here because I'm sure a shorter, easier to manage cut will definitely fall into this category - that's without even considering the spending on shampoo, conditioner and so on!

So that's today's task - off to the hairdresser.....

Month 9 - Bite 13

A while back when I'd started swimming again I decided something needed to be done with my dripping locks. I saw an advert about a magic towel and was tempted to try one. Now, it may be that I was lucky or even that towelling my hair more efficiently and then wrapping it up for a short while helped. Whatever I then started doing was working in starting the drying process so well that I was able to cut right down on hairdryer time, thus saving spending on electricity.

I'll have to dig it out and start using it again.

Month 9 - Bite 14

I chatted to the hairdresser about shampoo and conditioners during my visit (and yes I'm very happy with my much shorter hair!) From our conversation it's very apparent that I'm using too much shampoo. Even when my hair was long I didn't need as much as I was using. Apparently, a blob about the size of a ten pence piece will be plenty - another saving to be garnered. Oh and conditioner, well I don't need it every wash - especially as I'm cutting down on heat drying and styling. This hair thing gets better and better!

Month 9 - Bite 15

When I was in my late teens I had a friend who was most concerned about the state of her hair. She couldn't get it to look anything less than greasy however much she took care of it. She did tell me how envious of my hair she was and wanted to know how often I had to wash it. 

For many years when I was little, hair washing was done in the kitchen over the sink using a jug to rinse everyone's hair and hot water from a cranky Ascot boiler over the sink. It only tended to happen a couple of times a week - rather like the baths we had in the old tin bath that had to be lifted off the outside wall and filled from saucepans and kettles!  When I was twelve or thirteen our landlords put in a bathroom! It was a huge luxury, especially as it meant hair washing no longer had to be fitted in around cooking, washing up and laundry - all of which had relied on the one, old Butler sink previously.

Anyway, back to my friend.. I admitted to her that I only washed my hair a couple of times a week because of the practicalities of the situation but added that I'd read that washing it too often stripped it of natural oils and so made the body produce more to make up for this ending in oily or greasy hair. I was also able explain that putting my hair up or French plaiting never worked well straight after washing as it was too flyaway at that point.

My friend decided that she wanted to work on washing her hair less frequently to see if the idea of more washing being a bad thing was correct. Accepting that the start of the experiment might well see her hair get worse before it adjusted, we worked out a schedule. We planned out when she would wash her hair, starting with every other day, then every two days and so on. To our surprise, after a time her hair did improve. She settled on every third day as ideal for her hair, which got shinier and softer as time went on.

I'd forgotten all about this until recently and have got used to washing my hair just about every day and yes, it's looking a bit lifeless and dull. So from now on I'm going to repeat what we did with my friend's hair all those years ago to find out my optimum gap between washes. Less hot water, less shampoo and less drying time - got to be good!