SEND US YOUR PHOTOS!

I would love to see the different no-shampoo looks and all suitable entries will be posted and a vote taken for the noshampooer of 2010.  The winner will get a free blue noshampoo t-shirt (with silver writing!).  You can see some of my noshampoo styles on flickr.  You will be judging the photos yourself, so remember to keep in mind not only the subject (noshampoo) but also the artistic value of the photo itself!

Send your photos to nsphotocompetition2010 at noshampoo dot org.

THE ENTRIES

How to vote: Make a comment here or in the photo area (by clicking on the photo) saying ‘i vote for…’. Votes will be tallied and the result posted!

Mohawk Madonna

Mohawk Madonna - Lira Kay and Miranda Kanaan

Deer noShampoo,

Deer noShampoo - Soren du PLessis

NoShampoo Safety Blanket

NoShampoo Safety Blanket - Pip May

So how do you go noshampoo?

Step 1. Make the decision.

As Nietzsche pointed out, the fundamental human resource is will to power, a superset of will power.  Yes, once you have decided, really decided, to go noShampoo, the rest of this list is mere child’s play.  But what decision do you have to make?

Step 2. Formulate the decision exactly.

Do  you want to discontinue using shampoo, that generic item which can be obtained in hundreds of different forms in your local supermarket?  Are you going to replace it with something homemade, such as baking soda and apple cider vinegar?  What about something which has less environmental impact?  My recommendation: save yourself the brainpower involved in researching alternatives and just forget about the whole idea of putting anything in your hair at all.

Step 3. Take a break.

That’s right, now that the hard part is done (will power, remember), the rest is really pretty simple, right?  You just stop putting anything in your hair.

Step 4. Put something in your hair!

Well, of course I’d be lying if I said you could just stop putting stuff in your hair and everything would be hunky dory.  You’re hair will look like you just mopped the kitchen floor with it.  Take a fine tooth comb to it and all sorts of stuff will come out, the most interesting of which is a kind of grayish greasy substance which looks like rillettesевтини мебели.  So of course, you will be desperate to remove this matter from your head.  To be totally honest, it doesn’t really matter what you put in your hair, even shampoo.  You’ve probably got some of that old bottle lying around, so now’s the time to take a small quantity and clean your hair.

Step 5. Work from home.

Not really.  The idea here is to take progressively longer and longer breaks from your usual routine.  Using shampoo as your hair cleaner will become progessively less enticing (it really is very harsh) so now is the time to use baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Or just vinegar according to my mom.  Baking soda tingles your scalp, though, so I like it. Eventually you’ll only be using shampoo when  you go to the barber.  Then you’ll be asking the barber not to use shampoo.

Step 6. Nirvana

This is the point when you stop thinking about your hair.  It’s funny really, because all that time you were using shampoo, you probably weren’t thinking about your hair either, so it may feel like you haven’t progressed all that much.  This couldn’t be farther from the truth.  In my related study of addictions, I noticed that addicts were people who had returned to their previous truth, only now they required a foreign substance to achieve that state. Look at credit card abusers, at some point they run out of money, so technically they are in the same place they were when they started taking credit, only now they have to pay the fiddler as well. Look at drug addicts, they end being just as miserable as they were when they started taking the drugs (let’s face it, why would they take drugs in the first place) only now they are drug addicted and miserable.  Shampoo is the same, you were once an addict, which was easy enough and not particularly expensive (of course I only ever bought cheap shampoo).  But in the Nirvana state of no shampoo, you will not only be mentally free to think about whatever it is you were thinking about before going noshampoo, but you will also be slightly richer and you will doing the planet a favor.  Of course the poor cosmetic industry will have to take a tumble, but ah well.

Step 7. Learn from your mistakes

For those of you with children, make their lives easier by never instilling them with the foolish desire to use shampoo. With young’uns, it’s easy, you just stop using shampoo and they never know the difference.  With older children, you ought just to explain, or, like me, stop buying shampoo.  They’ll thank you for it later.

Any questions?

Do you ever feel like some of your relationships are only skin deep? Even significant others can sometimes give off that hollow thud when you tap them.  Well, go noshampoo and in 6 weeks, you’ll have put up a barrier that will separate the dodgy partner from the one that will stick around when times get tough. They’ll never know that in 6 months  you’ll be back to normal.

4. You can skip a whole aisle in the supermarket.

Supermarkets are getting more and more daunting. With an entire aisle devoted to shampoo (not to mention the entire aisle devoted to deodorant, shaving products, and conditioners) you’ll be happy in the knowledge that five or ten minutes less of your life will be devoted to something which is completely useless.  Spend that extra time with your family, if they can take it.

3. No need for Gel/Hairstyling

That’s right. The build up of oil in your head will lead to a life of funky hairstyles.  Here are my flickr photos devoted entirely to my noshampoo styles. And what’s even cooler is that brushing your hair actually makes it even funkier.

2. You have a new topic of converstion

Don’t you find that social gatherings are pretty stale affairs these days? You can’t even Bush Bash anymore. And then the conversations about kids/family/work dries up pretty fast.  This leaves you with little else to talk about, unless you are doing something really cool with your life…like using noshampoo! That’s right…you will be the funkiest most adventurous guy/girl at any social gathering.  And, no need to worry about starting meaningless relationships (see point 5).

1. Be a revolutionary!

Che Guevara, where are you?  These days, so little is worth getting excited about.  What is there to fight for anymore? If you have a poster of Che on your wall, then here’s the way you too can not only do something good for the world, but also actually look a little bit more like Che than you did before. Viva la revolucion!

Join the revolution!

 My head was getting very itchy for some reason and I was scratching it a lot and didn’t like the wads of gunk under my fingernails.

So I tried using a couple teaspoons of baking soda.  In France, baking soda comes in small paper envelopes, and I haven’t found the big boxes as you have in the states yet.  I used one envelope which is about two teaspoons.

I just wet my hair and put the powder all over my head and then scrubbed away.  There was a very pleasant tingling sensation which I enjoyed quite a bit, so I left it to sit for a couple of minutes.  Then I rinsed and put some lemon juice on my hair (vinegar is smelly).  That was it.

There was no extra sebum, but there was still some natural oil left. I read about baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, on wikipedia and found information which does indicate its history as a kind of soap. For whatever reason, it behaves on the scalp as a kind of emulsifier, and so is probably the perfect solution.

However…

My head was still itchy, which was the only reason I washed in the first place! So I did another wash with baking soda and then, one morning, my wife spotted a nit in my hair! My girls all had lice from school, so I must have gotten it from them.

I had to use some lice medication and then shampoo to wash it out (it was an oily lotion).  So now my hair and scalp are dry as a desert I can’t wait for the oil to build up again.

So, my advice would be to treat baking soda as a kind of mild shampoo. I don’t see anything particularly different about it.  My advice is still: don’t bother using anything unless you have to, and then, perhaps once or twice a month, try the baking soda and lemon approach.

Join the NoShampoo revolution. I’m interested in hearing from you about your experiences without shampoo. Go ahead and post your stories in the comments.

Let’s see if I can find a representative pic…

Yes, that’s me.  

It was hard at the beginning.  I had to ‘decide’ not to use shampoo every time I took a bath.  Now I don’t even think about it.  I reckon that if everybody eliminated shampoo, that simple effort would single handedly save the planet.  It’s a big idea, I know, but hey, the revolution must start with the individual!

Comments please.  And order a t-shirt, they’re fantastic!

I will see how it goes for a year and take it from there.

I live in London. London is a dirty city. I realize many of the noShampoo gurus are living near beaches (it seems mainly in Australia). If you swim in the ocean everyday, and live near a beach, I wouldn’t have thought your hair (or anything) would really get very dirty. This is not the case in London.

Grease builds up. I haven’t used shampoo for several weeks, and at the beginning, there was serious sebum build up. My brush was clogged with a greyish grease. The upside was that new and interesting styles such as the one shown below can be created.

This style was created by brushing the hair backwards. Notice the incredible amount of lift at the back.

I didn’t see how this initial Grease problem could be overcome so I tried various experiments with shampoo replacement options.

Shampoo alternatives

The basic idea here is to find something that cuts out some of the grease and dirt, but leaves enough behind so that your scalp doesn’t increase sebum production.

shampoo oil mixture
I mixed shampoo with almond oil in a 50/50 mix. Shaking gives a white foamy emulsion. Using the emulsion in your hair doesn’t really create much foam.
Result: Too much sebum was stripped, leaving the hair unprotected and dry, and re-starting the natural sebum production.
Conclusion: doesn’t work

egg yolk
Recommended to me by an Albanian friend. Egg yolk is an emulsifier, which is something that binds oil and water. Soaps are detergents, which are very strong emulsifiers. I figured this might be the answer
Result: Success! The hair was not greasy, and it was not completely stripped.
Downside: Eggy smell all day.
Conclusion: requires addition of perfumes.

egg yolk + yogurt + vanilla extract
To solve the problem of eggy smell, I added vanilla extract. My girlfriend also suggested yogurt. I used Goats Milk Yogurt. Approximate ratio: 1 egg yolk to two tablespoons yogurt + two drops vanilla extract.
Result: Success! Washing my girlfriends hair this time (yes I convinced her to go no shampoo), I noticed that any trace of egg white in the yolk will leave snotty white pieces stuck to the hair. I removed these manually. Trick is to wash hair with coldish water or remove all egg white from the yolk mixture. Her hair was left very shiny. She was happy with it. So was I. There is almost no sebum buildup afterwards.
Conclusion: Way to go!

Where to go next
Emulsifiers are the way forward. They are weak enough to leave the sebum bound to the hair and scalp, but strong enough to remove excess oil and dirt. I will see if I can find any other natural emulsifiers that do not smell like egg.