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Beauty

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Finally, a real post wedding chop almost three years after the wedding!

I thought about it for a long time and told Kay that I would chop my hair off at some point. I had told myself I’d wait for my bangs to grow out, but then I decided against that and went home after work one night and did this:

I relented and finally went to the hair dressers for the first time in 15 years to trim up the back, which is quite short. I told them I didn’t want a shampoo, just a trim, and they ended up doing the shampoo against my wishes.

I also just wanted a trim, not a whole haircut, but the hair dresser went a little nuts and cut off more than I wanted. I wanted to keep the front much longer and more dramatically angled and at the end of the haircut he snipped off one side… then I thought he had to even it out, but when he went for the other side he did even more, so now the hair is about 3/4″ longer on one side than the other.

Shampoo plus “real” haircut I didn’t want, plus blow drying to double check the cut when it was dry cost me 95CHF / $100.

…and that folks, is why I hate going to the hair dresser. They don’t do what you want, they cut more than you want and they charge you a shit ton. I was happier with the back, but upset about the front. I mean, it will grow again, but why did I have to pay 95 bucks for that? I can cut uneven hair myself.

Kay pretty much hated the haircut at first. He is sort of warming up to it, but he really likes it long. I’m getting used to having hair above my shoulders again. It’s been years!

Lots of people have been asking me if I’m happy how much faster it is to style now, but unless you do a super pixie haircut, this style actually takes much longer to do than long hair!

With long hair I would wash it twice a week and wear it twice down and once or twice up with dry shampoo. Pulling it up and keeping it out of my way at the gym was easy.

Now with short hair, the hair gets a lot sweatier at the gym and I need to wash it more often. Styling at the gym means a lot of blow drying, even if I didn’t shampoo it that day. After blow drying it I have to straighten it. So nope… it’s really a way more time-intensive haircut, but I knew that when I did it.

Hurrah for short hair!

Beauty

Hairy Matters: No Poo Break

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Well I broke down and used shampoo last night.

katie hair

I made it about two months, but I’m not sure I can keep up with no poo for a few reasons:

  • My last couple of washes seemed like they didn’t get my hair completely clean. I’d look OK in the front, but greasy enough in the back that I’d have to immediately pull my hair up like I have to on dirty hair days.
  • My baking soda wasn’t lathering enough and to be honest, with hard water I don’t think I have enough patience to boil water for 10-20 minutes and wait for it to cool every time I want to shower. It’s just too much hassle for me. I also accidentally spilled the vinegar solution once and it went all over the bathroom floor. That doesn’t happen with shampoo. (Yeah, I know there are solutions for that, but I’m just saying.)
  • As a result of not washing with boiled water, the grey matter and flakes piling up in my comb and brushes were pretty gross. And I don’t really like brushing my hair with all this crap in it so I’ve been washing my brushes every few days. I thought the flakes were just me but….
  • I actually convinced Kay to try out no-poo for a couple weeks and on the weekend I noticed he also had little white flakes in his hair. He hadn’t washed it for about a week aside from water. He’s never had flakes before now or complained of dry scalp, so I am chalking this up to no-poo and our hard water. (Although Kay still disagrees that our water is hard!)

So with Kay’s flakes convincing me maybe no-poo isn’t the best for us, I washed my hair (twice!) with some sulfate free shampoo last night, conditioned it, and man it looks and feels great today!

I still want to keep shampooing to a minimum because I really value not having to shampoo every night and I think it is better for my scalp, but I am concerned if I leave the no-poo method what I will do about SLS free shampoo. The SLS-free shampoo I have now was a gift from Sweden and apparently it’s not even on the market anymore. Probably out of my budget anyway.

But no-poo was about to become an issue too. They do not sell boxes of baking soda in the grocery here and I was on my last box that my brother brought over for Christmas in 2010. Buying baking soda from the English bookstore is obscenely expensive and there’s no way I’m using little 1tsp sachets of baking soda from the grocery.

So we’ll see what happens. Kay and I decided not to buy anymore super cheap shampoo but we are not sure what to buy since we are mostly limited to brands like Loreal, Pantene, etc in the grocery store.

Any suggestions? I am heading to the US next month so I could stockpile for awhile.

Beauty

Hairy Matters: No-poo Trial

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Over the four years in Switzerland my hair has become increasingly unhappy. I started suffering from an itchy scalp, particularly in the back/neck area that became a stress release. I’d stress and unconsciously scratch, making my scalp all the more unhappy.

This was the start of the neck/scalp itch in 2008. Hard to believe it’s been four years I’ve been sort of dealing with this.

In the past two years I’ve been pretty good about getting my stress under control and Kay was great about yelling at me when I started scratching. Lots of lotion and the scalp is in a better spot, but overall my whole head was still itchy and dry.

If I would go one day without shampooing, my whole head would be itchy and oily again. Gross, right?

Dandruff shampoos didn’t help and sulfate free shampoos are hard to come by here. Even the natural medicine store only sells sulfate shampoo and their overpriced solutions didn’t do anything for me.

In the summer I decided to cut back and only shampoo once or twice a week. On the off days I would use 100% silica powder spheres from Coastal Scents to “powder” my hair in the front to make it look presentable at work. (They don’t sell dry shampoo in Switzerland.) The oils made my hair really, really itchy for the first few weeks I did this and I really had to try hard not to scratch.

After doing this method for several months, I think my hair got used to producing less oil, but it was still dry and fairly itchy so I wanted to kick the shampoo and go no-poo.

For around two weeks now I’ve been trying out the no-poo method. A few times a week I shower and use 1 tablespoon of baking soda (BS) diluted with shower water and one 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (ACV) diluted with shower water.

I’ve been testing out different proportions and variations to get a mix that works well for me. So far I’ve tried:

  • Using one mix of BS and ACV together
  • Mixing the BS into a paste and putting that on my head in the bad parts first and then rinsing with a diluted BS mixture.
  • Using a BS mixture sans ACV
  • Using a diluted mix of BS, rinse, followed by a mix of diluted ACV

On the other days, I usually shower and rinse with normal water, but I’m still trying to skip some days because I love the convenience of not washing my hair every day.

In general, my head is not very itchy. It still seems dry, but it’s not anywhere as itchy as it used to be, especially if I skip a day washing, but I’m running into some problems:

On the non-hair wash days, my hair looks pretty oily and I can’t wear it down. Also, even after months of shampooing it seldom
I have flakes. I don’t think it’s dandruff, but I think it is dry scalp still.
There’s also a grey waxy/lint buildup is in my combs/brushes immediately after I use them.

I think I’m still getting used to the no-poo thing, but after two weeks it now seems like my hair is getting dirtier and dirtier than when I first started it. After washing it doesn’t seem as clean as the first few times I did it, so much that I can’t even wear my hair down right after I washed it.

The flakes/dandruff thing annoys the crap out of me. I might make an appointment with a dermatologist at some point, but that would be a big PIA in Zürich and I’m sure they would just give me a dandruff shampoo to start off with.

Lastly, the waxy lint stuff coming off in my combs and brushes is really disturbing me. It got me searching for other people dealing with dandruff and if it had to do something with my water.

I remembered that we have pretty hard water in Zürich. In Winterthur we used to have to de-chalk our coffee machine and hot pot fairly regularly. The water is softer in Zürich, but still pretty hard I think. Maybe that’s part of my problem?

I’ve got some solutions I could try:

  • Use distilled water to wash hair – Buying water in Zürich costs $$$, but if no other options work I may try this.
  • Get a water filter – This is maybe more feasible, but I’d have to investigate the possibilities. I think Kay already looked into this a few years ago…
  • Shower with colder water. This is supposed to help the dry flakes. But ugh, my hot showers!! 🙁
  • Boil water and mix BS with that before applying. This should give the “slippery” feeling that I haven’t been experiencing with my hard water.
  • Add some salt to soften the water
  • Condition with lime or lemon juice instead of ACV

I think for now I’m going to try mixing my BS with the boiling water + a little salt and rinsing with some lemon juice. I really don’t want to have to resort to buying bottled water to rinse my hair when we have tap. That seems so counterintuitive to me. Then I might as well go back to using normal shampoo. Urgh!

Do you have any no-poo successes or failures to share with me?