How to wash your hair without shampoo

Right now, I just may gross you out when I tell you something: I haven’t used shampoo or conditioner in three months.

Truly, I haven’t touched a bottle of either, and I don’t plan on using them anytime in the foreseeable future. My hair is as clean as a whistle, and to be honest, I don’t know if it’s looked this healthy in years.

A few months ago, I started reading around the web about going shampoo-free, and I was intrigued. But like many of you right now, I was also perplexed. Why would you bother? What’s the harm in using shampoo? And isn’t your hair greasy and smelly?

So I read for a few weeks, just taking in info, and one night, after reading about the shampoo-free concept on like the twelfth blog I enjoy, I decided to give it a shot. If I hated it, then no harm — I’ll just keep to my shampooing ways.

But if I liked it as much as everyone else seemed to,then I’ve found a frugal, easy, toxic-free way to care for my hair. So I took the plunge.

Why go ‘poo-free?

Before I go in to the how of no shampoo, it’s a good idea to tell you the why. There’s a lot of valuable information on the Internet, so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. But here are the reasons that spoke most to me.

1. SHAMPOO IS A DETERGENT.

Shampoo cleans your hair, but it also strips it of all the healthy oil your body naturally produces. These oils protect your hair and keep it soft and strong.

Shampoo was only introduced in the early 20th century — before that, people relied on good-old soap, which can wash hair just as well without removing important oils. But soap doesn’t work well in alkaline water, and when water in civilized areas started becoming more mineral-heavy (read: alkaline), soap became a challenge. It made the scales on hair stand up, making it weaker and rougher. So shampoo was introduced, marketed with its only benefit of working in both hard and soft water.

Detergent is harsh. I doubt we’d use the same type of stuff to wash our bodies as we would our dishes, but that’s essentially what we’re doing with shampoo.

2. SHAMPOO HAS ALL SORTS OF CHEMICALS.

Our family typically goes out of our way to not eat boxed chemicals disguised as food — we stick to the natural, whole foods that either come from the ground or once ate things that came from the ground. But skin is our largest organ, and it’s extremely porous — substances can easily enter the bloodstream directly through our skin, and they can stay for a long time.

Since we try to avoid food that has unpronounceable ingredients, we thought it only made sense to adhere to the same standards for the stuff we slather on our skin.Since this includes shampoo, we sought out an alternative.

Most shampoos also contain mineral oil, which is a byproduct when gasoline is distilled from crude oil. It’s added to shampoo (along with hundreds of other products) to thickly coat the strands, giving hair an artificial shine. And since it can’t absorb into skin, like the other ingredients, it acts as a barrier on our scalp, preventing oil from being released — thus requiring more shampoo to strip away the grease. This is why the more shampoo you use, the more you need.

3. SHAMPOO IS AN UNNECESSARY COST.

So because shampoo isn’t really necessary, using it creates this cycle that requires a dependence on the stuff, along with other hair products. In order to combat the stripping of protective oils, we need an artificial protectant called conditioner. And because now my hair is coated with unnatural substances, it requires more unnatural substances to keep it styled, strong, and workable. The list of hair pomades, waxes, gels, mousses, and detanglers available could take up pages on this site.

Since we’re a frugal family, seeking a simple life, it made sense to eliminate something we didn’t truly need.  We’d rather spend our money elsewhere.

There are plenty of other reasons — shampoo caused my husband’s dry, itchy scalp, and we had another added expense of buying a tear-free type of shampoo for our kiddos. While this wasn’t a life-or-death situation for us, by any means, it made more and more sense for us to give a shampoo-free life a shot once we read about it.

How to go ‘poo-free

No, this isn’t yours truly in a police line-up — it’s my hair today, a day after rinsing in baking soda and vinegar.

I don’t like writing doom and destruction on this blog — I’d rather give you useful, practical information that might make your life simpler. So that’s enough on the why not to do something — here are helpful tips for how you can give going ‘poo-free a shot.

Baking soda is your friend

Baking soda works wonders on hair, along with its other many household helps. It’s gentle, it’s the weakest alkaline, and it very gently clarifies hair from chemical buildup.

Like many natural cleaners, the recipe isn’t static — it can be tweaked to suit your needs. The standard amount for hair care is one tablespoon of baking soda to one cup of water. Those with curly or thicker hair might need a bit more baking soda, and those with thin or fine hair might need less. Experiment, and see what works for you.

I use a simple 8-ounce squeeze bottle, pour in a tablespoon of baking soda with a funnel, then fill up the rest with water from the kitchen sink. I give it a good shake to dissolve the baking soda, and it’s ready to be used.

In the shower, I soak my hair with water, then I squeeze a bit of the baking soda mixture on my scalp, starting at the crown. I massage it in as I go, squeezing a bit more here and there, concentrating mostly on the scalp. I include my hair as well, but since most of the oils originate from the scalp itself, the hair will naturally get cleaned once the scalp is clarified.

After a few minutes, I rinse it out, just like I would shampoo.

For my husband and I combined, this amount will last us about a week or week and a half. He has fairly short hair, and mine is just below my ears.

Apple cider vinegar is your next friend

Apple cider vinegar is a mild acidic, working well to counteract the baking soda, and thus acts as a great replacement for conditioner.It detangles the hair folicles, seals the cuticle, and balances the hair’s pH balance.

A little goes a very long way, just like the baking soda. The standard recipe is also one tablespoon apple cider vinegar to one cup water. For this, I use an old conditioner bottle, and fill it with the vinegar and water via funnel, then finish it with a shake.

My hair tends to rest a little on the oily side naturally, so I don’t use much of this. I pour a little on just the ends of my hair, let it rest for a few seconds, then rinse it out.

And that, from start to finish, is my current hair care routine.

Other tips

• You might have a transition period that lasts from a few weeks to a few months, where your hair reacts with excess oil to the lack of shampoo. This is perfectly normal. It’s used to having its oils stripped, so it might take time for the oil to stop producing so heavily in protest. My transition period only lasted about two weeks, and it wasn’t any big deal, really.

• I hear that eventually, you can wean off baking soda and vinegar all together, relying only on water in the shower to remove dirt and oil. I haven’t gotten there yet.

• If you find that your hair is too oily (after the transition period), try using less vinegar, or not using it all together. Some people also use lemon juice instead of vinegar as their acidic clarifier.

• If your hair feels too dry, use less baking soda, or try using honey instead of vinegar.

• I don’t need anything else for my hair. I stopped using pomade, which I previously used religiously to cut the frizzies. My hair is amazingly pliable, and can hold styles without my needing to do much of anything. I’m thrilled with the results!

• We also use this mix on our kiddos’ heads, though we only use it once a week or so. Sometimes we’ll even go two weeks, since their scalps don’t really produce much oil at this age. We clean more ketchup and oatmeal out than we do oil.

For more information:

• Megan wrote about her no-poo experience on Sorta Crunchy.
• Stephanie of Keeper of the Home has some excellent info on going shampoo-free.
• Babs of Babyslime has a veritable wealth of information on the topic.

Update: Almost two years after this post, I wrote an update: do I still use this method?

A second update: This post is the most visited post on Simple Mom. I’m honored that you might find something useful here! Thank you for reading. However, I’m unable to respond to the many, many comments here, so please know that while I read each one, unfortunately I just don’t have the time to respond. I’m leaving comments open, however, so that other readers can chime in, if they like!