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Nonie, if you dont mind me asking, why do you shampoo twice a week? especially if you wear head wraps all the time and find that your hair is rarely dirty?
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toinette Mostly out of habit. I have never felt comfortable with the idea of wetting my hair w/o getting it clean...so I'd either never wet my hair, or I'd wet it and then shampoo it and that's from way back when I knew nothing about hair. Unless I shampooed my hair, I didn't feel clean. In later years, shampooing my hair has become the highlight of my hair journey because I love the massages I give myself when I shampoo my hair. Shampoo is the only product I love to get on my scalp and I love the squeaky clean feeling I get when I rinse it out. My scalp feels so fresh and alive!
Before 2001, I used to shampoo my hair every two weeks. Then I came across a new idea of water being a moisturizer and that washing more often was not drying as I thought but would actually be moisturizing. I was getting this info from Brenda's report (
www.blackwomenrejoice.com). Perhaps it's because while reading it, I thought of how white people wash their hair more often and it doesn't fall off but actually seems to thrive (Yeah, I know their hair gets oily and needs to be washed more often) that I mistakenly assumed Brenda was saying not to use moisturizers at all and be like those whites who was condition and call it a day. I did see her suggestion to leave conditioner in hair and tried this with Humectress which is both a rinse out and leave-in and so felt safer to test out. But I didn't care for it. So I just went with no product option as I thought that was the only alternative suggested.
Brenda's theory was if your hair felt dry, it was time to wash it. So I started off just listening to my hair. I wasn't using any product as a leave-in but I was baggying and so my hair felt soft and moisturized for a few days after a wash. But then it'd start to feel dry, so I'd take that as a cue to wash. Brenda did mention CWing so I did it sometimes, but over time, the massages and the squeaky clean tingly scalp became the thing I looked forward to...so shampoo became a must on my washes.
For a few weeks after I started that regimen, I just played it by ear. Waited till my hair felt dry then washed it. In time it turned out that twice a week washes were about all it took to keep my hair moisturized.
So I wash twice for the moisture. I shampoo each time because I love to keep my scalp squeaky clean and love the massages I get and it doesn't hurt me to do this. I also love the idea of conditioning hair that is free of any products so that there's nothing in the way of absorption.
I could never do a no-poo regimen because I believe conditioner has no business on my scalp and can't imagine wetting my hair and not cleaning my scalp. (LOL I just realized I'm grimacing as I imagine and type this.
I am imagining a smell I know of wet sweaty heads as of someone who's been doing a hard job outdoors then it started raining and you're stuck with them in an elevator and it almost feels as if fumes are emanating from their head and going to envelope everyone.
) Nah, I love how clean shampoo makes me feel. I love that the smell one can smell in my hair is conditioner because pure unadulterated conditioner was applied to clean hair. Rather than dry my hair, shampoos actually clear my scalp for sebum production to be free and unrestricted--which is probably why my baggying leaves my hair feeling soft because with subsequent baggying, more sebum produced (...with nothing in the way to block production) and recycled moisture from my wash bathe my strands. I also wash because with my baggying, there's got to be sweating--even though you'd never guess it if you were to smell my hair. So yeah, I like to wash that off too.
On a completely random note, I wonder why my curls pop so beautifully while my deep conditioner sits in it, yet when it's washed out it's a whole other story. *le sigh* 
