[julesinottawa]

I was reading the post by Keanusmom and it has inspired me to try going no-poo again. I tried it about a year and a half ago but I wasn't able to decrease my number of shampoos per week and didn't really see an improvement in my hair. But, I'm willing to give it another go after reading that post.

The questions I have are this:
How much water do you dilute the BS in? And how hot should it be? Last time, I actually had to heat the water before it would be hot enough to make the BS fizz. Out of the tap it just wasn't hot enough. Do I need to heat the water? Does it need to visibly fizz? This was the part that discouraged me because the kitchen was on the main floor and the shower was upstairs and it seemed like such a chore that my no-poo routine took me all over the house.

Also, when I get to the point of adding EO's, do I add them to the BS part or the ACV part?

That's all I can think of for now. TIA!

 

[Spastica]

The baking soda does not need to fizz, nor have I ever seen it fizz, I'm not sure where anybody is getting that from.

You can either dilute a tablespoon of baking soda in the hot water that is from your shower or bathroom water in a cup or two of water (or use an old shampoo bottle's worth of water and put baking soda in it). People do this so it's easily 'pourable' or 'dumpable' on their hair. Or, you can do what I do and make a mixture with conditioner. Baking soda just needs to be mixed with something liquid based for it to dissolve a little, and warm to hot water helps it. I couldn't get my scalp very clean with just pouring or squirting the mixture on my head, I felt that I didn't have enough of the baking soda mixture on my scalp and it just ran down the drain, so I use a lightweight conditioner with it. It totally depends on the person.

As for number of shampoos, you will have to shampoo as you usually do for a while until your hair and scalp get used to using baking soda to clean it instead of shampoo. Because shampoo strips your hair and scalp of oil, it overcompensates by producing more oil. Until your scalp and body realizes that you're not going to overstrip it, it will detox and keep producing oil until it eventually lessens to a normal amount.

I've been doing no poo for about 5 months successfully (2 months before that was not too great since I was just learning about my hair and learning no poo) and I still need to clean my hair at least every other day or 2 days with baking soda. On the other days, I can mix conditioner with brown sugar and that cleans my scalp and hair, or I just do a scalp scrub with water alone. There's no hard and fast rule how often or not often you need to clean your hair -- but you may notice over time, you will not need to no poo as often if you don't want to.

EO's are a personal thing. Some people add them to the baking soda mixture (few drops of EO, depending on what it is), or they add it to their vinegar mixture.

I like that some EO's have degreasing and cleaning abilities, like tea tree oil, so I put 2-3 drops in my mixture of a blob of conditioner, tablespoon or less of baking soda, tablespoon or less of brown sugar. This combo works for me, but it took me months to find out that that combination worked for me, lol.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly what to do with your hair because a) I don't know your hair type and how it behaves and b) no-poo is natural and very personalized. It's not a one size fits all remedy like shampoo typically is. Judging from our threads and seeing that other people had problems while using commercial shampoo, even commercial shampoo can't quite fit in the 'one size fits all' category because people's bodies are different.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but it's kind of a reactive process and trial by error thing. You can come back on here and tell us what's happening to your hair and we can troubleshoot as you go.