Wash #1: 7 days after last poo wash

I spent some time at the natural foods store to choose a scent that would help mask the god awful smell of vinegar, I chose a good quality lime essential oil, and since it's July, I thought if I ended up smelling like limes, that would be simply wonderful, so I was armed with baking soda and vinegar and my lime essential oil, and two squeezie containers (plastic ones that would be used for ketchup type thing).

Here's me one week into going "poo-less" - July 21st.

1 part baking soda : 3 parts water, shake very well

1 part vinegar : 8 parts water + 5 drops of lime essential oil

Week one: I've washed with no-poo twice on the first day, and once on the 4th day.

After my first no-poo wash I treated my hair to warm coconut oil and slathered it all over my hair (not the scalp) and brushed and brushed and brushed it throughout my entire head of hair.  I'm a dry curly girl, remember.  Then I braided it and let it dry.  That night I washed it again using the no-poo method and rinsed it very very well.   It's no fun brushing out those tangles with no-poo though, lemme tell you - that's nat'u'ralllll hair, no slippery help from the conditioner!  I'm so glad I started with the coconut oil infusion.

Note: The tangly/dry feeling your hair gets after you drop store bought shampoos and conditioners is just your real hair, minus the chemical and wax coating, due to heat, dyes, and other store products you’ve subjected it to.  Soo... for now, I'm going to use coconut oil to help add moisture to the ends and in the thickest part as needed since I have some layers.  If there are any dry scalp issues, I've read that a drop of tea tree oil in the baking soda will take care of that.

My routine is that I brush my dry hair 50 strokes before each shower to get that natural oil moving down the length of my hair every day.  I'm wearing my hair in a braid straight out of the shower all day every day to keep the frizzies and tangles at bay, but truly, my hair is very very soft and feels light and fluffy when dry after one week of going "poo-less" and  I rinse with water every day just because the braid looks better when I braid it wet.

Does my hair smell like vinegar?  No.  Surprisingly the lime does a good job of masking the smell during the wash and once my hair is dry, both Hubby and my Mom say they don't smell the vinegar and don't really even smell the lime.  Interesting.  My brush smells of lime :)

Now I've just found this great post from Leah who's been doing this for a very long time, and has some great tips, for example:

"... baking soda solution feeling slippery in your hair when you apply it. Slippery? My baking soda solution had always felt dry and cottony on my hair. So I researched some more and found that baking soda acts as a natural water softener. I increased the amount of baking soda in my solution until I achieved the slippery feeling mentioned – VOILA – success! NOTE: If you are blessed with soft water your No Poo hair success will come faster than those of us with hard water. If you have hard water plan on having to increase your baking soda till you achieve “slippery”.