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Freddi’s Curly Hair Challenge
First, I want to say a bit of background information about my curly hair: I’ve never really straightened my hair, but my friends were always ready to pounce on me with their straighteners. Nonetheless, I guess I’ve always been natural, so that wasn’t my problem.
My problem was was that I didn’t look after my hair. I never tried to do anything with it, or try to make it look good. This year, I slowly started paying attention to it, and began noticing some things. After discovering this web site, I thought I wanted to make it the best it can be!
First, I started buying different products and began educating myself about silicones and sulfates. Quite a few times, I had to throw products away due to hidden cones and build up that was making my hair worse.
I thought that my goal was to have healthy, long, well defined curls, and I really wanted my parents to see that since I live on the other side of the world and will becoming home in four weeks. Mum always had wonderful hair and always looked after it, so I thought that it would be something we could do together.
My rules were simple: no products. I would only use things found in nature, including oils, teas, herbs and a homemade, all-natural conditioner. In addition, I would co-wash often and use an all-natural shampoo. Finally, I would keep a hair dairy and write in it twice a day, morning and night, to track my progress.
What is it that I wanted to improve? Everything, but mostly I wanted to try to have as little frizz as possible, have well-defined curls and see how much length I could get in a short span of four weeks.
So I would like to welcome you to my hair journey!
Week One
I’ve been infusing olive oil with rosemary and using that quiet a bit. Rosemary is great for hair growth, so I thought I’d give it a go. So I pick fresh rosemary, pour olive oil over it, heat it up for 30 seconds, put a lid on it and leave it for a week. I could probably leave it longer, but a week is good for me. I also got some marshmallow root that I’ll be using to rinse my hair. I’ve heard that’s great as well.
To start off, I used a sulfate shampoo. Now I haven’t used sulfate poo in years, but I wanted to start with really clean hair. The next night I made a deep conditioner and left it in for two hours. Then I rinsed it out with water and carefully rinsed with the marshmallow. Note to self: wash the DT with no-poo next time — hair smelled bad after the water and marshmallow!
I then sealed with olive/rosemary oil and let it air dry for a bit. Finally, I put it in a loose pony tail to sleep on it.
