No Poo (If It Were Me, I’d Put an Apostrophe Before the P, But Wikipedia Doesn’t Have One, So)

When I was in Italy, my host sister washed her hair on Saturday evenings. That was it. Once a week. So did most of my friends. Everybody thought I was bananas for washing my hair every day.

And they were right. So much work. Washing, conditioning, drying. Drying’s the worst.

I’ve been semi-obsessed with going No Poo (grossest/most red-herringy name for a thing ever?—yes), or at least Less Poo, for over a decade. Aside from not having to dry it and avoiding rubbing chemicals directly into my scalp underneath which sits my brain just begging for cancer of itself, think how much money I’d save over the course of a lifetime if I didn’t buy shampoo or conditioner. Let’s be conservative and say five bucks a month, times twelve months, times (let me go ahead and give myself another) 50 years… that’s three grand! That’s a trip somewhere cool!

The internets say that, as a super-cheap option, you can wash your hair with baking soda and condition it with vinegar. (And if you do them at the same time, woohoo—science project!) I’ve used them. I thought rinsing with vinegar would make me smell like salad dressing all day, but no, it was fine. However, baking soda is a mite harsh on the old strands, especially when you dye the crap out of them like I do.

And it was cheap, but I still had to wash it. And dry it UGH MY LIFE IS SO HARD.

People say you can just “train” your hair not to need any shampoo whatsoever by—get this—not washing it.

[Don’t be greasy! Good hair. *treat* Who’s a good hair? Who’s the best hair?]

In 2003, to train it, I started washing my hair every other day instead of every day. Those “people” I mentioned, the supposed professional hair whisperers: liars. I wore head scarves on non-wash days for two years because that shit was like the Deepwater Horizons spill. A decade later, it still gets greasy on the second day. Now on non-wash days, I’ll apply dry shampoo like

or maybe

but they’re probably both full of chemicals, and I doubt I’m saving any money. The Psssssst! is only six bucks but provides maybe four applications, and the Alterna lasts a while but put me out $22 at Sephora.

So anyway, one thing we know about me is that I like to take somebody else’s system and fuck it up (see: cooking posts). One time, I decided that since one could wash one’s hair with baking soda, one could probably use baking soda as a dry shampoo. I sprinkled some on my scalp, tossed it through, and voila! It totally worked. Absorbed the oils, and I was on my way.

Except it was raining that day. Maybe you’ve used baking soda as a kitchen or bathroom cleanser, and you know that all you have to do is add a little water and it becomes a viscous paste. Maybe you can conclude that I walked around that day with a white sludge covering my scalp all day. Maybe you understand that I’m an idiot.

I have good intentions. That counts for something, right?