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Holy Shampoo Bars, Batman!
Feb. 14th, 2009 01:16 amOkay, so I totally caved to temptation. Even though Friday is a strict non-washing day this quarter, I couldn't resist trying my new shampoo bars right away, so I went ahead and hopped in the shower anyway.
I'm just going to come right and say it: HOLY WOW SHAMPOO BARS. I still have three bars to try out, obviously, and I'll yammer on about those as I go through them. And I'm going to reserve final opinion until I've had a chance to see what my hair looks like on the second and third days after washing, and after using the bars for a few times in a row, since word on the street is that it takes some people a while to adjust to natural shampoos. But so far, I'm going to call this experiment a success in concept at the very least.
I started out with the Camomile and Citrus bar, since that seems to be pretty popular with people. Also it smells great - not as citrusy as I was hoping, since I have a dire citrus addiction, but very clean and mild and pleasant. I followed the instructions from the Chagrin Valley site and the Long Hair Comm pretty closely (first time is not the time to improvise): rub the bar on your hair, moving back from the hairline to the nape, and down the length, and then work up a nice lather, then rinse and repeat. It's a little more work than a liquid shampoo; it doesn't start lathering up just by looking at it funny. But once you get it worked in it does lather up really well. :D
After I rinsed for the second time, my hair felt really, really clean but kind of weird. Sort of squeaky, or even waxy - I could barely run my hand down it because it stuck against the hair. Luckily, I was prepared for this, and I had my vinegar rinse all ready to go. My measurements aren't very exact (I don't have a measuring spoon, only larger and smaller kitchen spoons), but I put about 3, maybe 3.5 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in one of my empty conditioner bottles (I keep them after I finish them because I water my conditioner down a little to make it last longer) and filled it most of the rest of the way with water, then poured that solution on my hair. Left it in while I conditioned (supposedly a lot of people don't need to condition with shampoo bars, but my hair without conditioner is...scary), then rinsed it all out. As soon as the vinegar touched my hair the waxy feeling started to go away; by the time I was out of the shower, my hair felt great.
And now that it's dry (five hours later), I'm just blown away by how amazing my hair feels. Like, it is so soft and shiny, and thicker than usual, and I am getting crazy amounts of curl definition - resilient curls, even, that don't start to fall out the second I touch them. And for the first time in ages my ends don't feel all scratchy and dry and awful, even though I didn't use any oil this time around. It is FANTABULOUS. I really hope my hair looks good tomorrow, because if my hair is going to look and feel like this with shampoo bars, I do not want to give them up.
I also like how natural these bars are. They aren't full of petrochemicals and preservatives; I can recognize and pronounce every ingredient on the label, and it's not a long list of ingredients, at that. I'm not buying plastic bottles that will sit in a dump for the rest of forever; the bars come in an environmentally-friendly, bio-degradeable tiny paper bag. They aren't made by a massive, evil corporation that doesn't pay its employees a living wage or offer them any benefits; it's made by a woman named Ida and her husband. They live in Ohio. If you email them about the product, they will actually talk to you. I like the idea of supporting small, nature-friendly, women-run businesses. We need more of them.
So yeah, I may be very close to being sold on these shampoo bars.
I'm just going to come right and say it: HOLY WOW SHAMPOO BARS. I still have three bars to try out, obviously, and I'll yammer on about those as I go through them. And I'm going to reserve final opinion until I've had a chance to see what my hair looks like on the second and third days after washing, and after using the bars for a few times in a row, since word on the street is that it takes some people a while to adjust to natural shampoos. But so far, I'm going to call this experiment a success in concept at the very least.
I started out with the Camomile and Citrus bar, since that seems to be pretty popular with people. Also it smells great - not as citrusy as I was hoping, since I have a dire citrus addiction, but very clean and mild and pleasant. I followed the instructions from the Chagrin Valley site and the Long Hair Comm pretty closely (first time is not the time to improvise): rub the bar on your hair, moving back from the hairline to the nape, and down the length, and then work up a nice lather, then rinse and repeat. It's a little more work than a liquid shampoo; it doesn't start lathering up just by looking at it funny. But once you get it worked in it does lather up really well. :D
After I rinsed for the second time, my hair felt really, really clean but kind of weird. Sort of squeaky, or even waxy - I could barely run my hand down it because it stuck against the hair. Luckily, I was prepared for this, and I had my vinegar rinse all ready to go. My measurements aren't very exact (I don't have a measuring spoon, only larger and smaller kitchen spoons), but I put about 3, maybe 3.5 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in one of my empty conditioner bottles (I keep them after I finish them because I water my conditioner down a little to make it last longer) and filled it most of the rest of the way with water, then poured that solution on my hair. Left it in while I conditioned (supposedly a lot of people don't need to condition with shampoo bars, but my hair without conditioner is...scary), then rinsed it all out. As soon as the vinegar touched my hair the waxy feeling started to go away; by the time I was out of the shower, my hair felt great.
And now that it's dry (five hours later), I'm just blown away by how amazing my hair feels. Like, it is so soft and shiny, and thicker than usual, and I am getting crazy amounts of curl definition - resilient curls, even, that don't start to fall out the second I touch them. And for the first time in ages my ends don't feel all scratchy and dry and awful, even though I didn't use any oil this time around. It is FANTABULOUS. I really hope my hair looks good tomorrow, because if my hair is going to look and feel like this with shampoo bars, I do not want to give them up.
I also like how natural these bars are. They aren't full of petrochemicals and preservatives; I can recognize and pronounce every ingredient on the label, and it's not a long list of ingredients, at that. I'm not buying plastic bottles that will sit in a dump for the rest of forever; the bars come in an environmentally-friendly, bio-degradeable tiny paper bag. They aren't made by a massive, evil corporation that doesn't pay its employees a living wage or offer them any benefits; it's made by a woman named Ida and her husband. They live in Ohio. If you email them about the product, they will actually talk to you. I like the idea of supporting small, nature-friendly, women-run businesses. We need more of them.
So yeah, I may be very close to being sold on these shampoo bars.