No Poo Deux

I thought that I should update you all on my no poo experiment, as it's been about three weeks since I started. I'm not posting pictures, though, as I personally don't see much of a difference and the lighting's not good in here anyway. So, without further delays on my part, my thoughts thus far:

I haven't really noticed much of a change. I know that's slightly underwhelming for most of my adoring public, but there you have it. To be honest, I had to check the date of my previous blog post on this matter to remember when I'd even started this experiment-it's been that normal to me.

The good:
-I haven't had to buy hair products at all in the past few weeks. This makes my wallet (or R's wallet) happy. And my corner of the shower, as it's less crowded.
-My showers are uber short, which is not only great for time but also for water conservation (which is important at the moment as we haven't had rain in weeks-although we're not under a water restriction it still seems like a good thing to do). I only have to do the baking soda-vinegar wash a couple of times a week, so the lack of hair washing means shorter showers.
-I don't feel like I'm constantly washing my hair. If I take a shower in the morning and then work out in the evening and shower again afterward, I don't feel like I'm over shampooing or conditioning, because I'm just rinsing.
-My hair is less tangled. This was a huge surprise to me-for whatever reason I thought that by not conditioning my hair every day it would be a huge tangled mess. This however is not the case. In fact-it's the opposite! I have so few tangles. It's great!

The bad:
-I miss the good smells of my shampoo. I don't mind the smell of vinegar, but mint is nicer.
-When I get to the wash day, it's pretty obvious my hair needs to be washed (at least to me), but not in a horrific way, just a kind of "she should wash her hair" way. But it's not too bad.
-My wet hair doesn't feel as soft as it did when I was conditioning, but there you go.
-I can't figure out the washcloth thing. Am I supposed to do this when my hair is dry or wet? The tip was to "brush" your hair with a damp washcloth 100 times, but I don't know if that's wet or dry hair. I don't know if it even makes a different. So I haven't been doing it.

All in all it's not been too bad. Every now and then when I'm running I get a whiff of vinegar, but it's not very strong or anything. The baking soda/vinegar rinse has worked surprisingly well and I definitely notice a difference after I wash my hair with this stuff. I'll probably keep this up for now. The real test will be if I get my hair cut short in late August before school (I usually get my hair cut chin-length once a year before school starts--then it's long enough to pull back by the spring but is down in the winter to keep me warm). I don't know how the frizz has really compared because I don't wear my hair down in the summer. I guess I'll have to figure that out...

In the meantime, the garden continues to grow (we have several cucumbers and strawberries and tomatoes in the works!), the cats just turned one, and I'm getting more and more excited about school. I found the backpack I want (finally-after thinking of several I found an Osprey that looks like it will be perfect) and yeah. That's about it. It's summer. And we have beer to bottle soon. And the World Cup final is Sunday. Woohoo!