I changed my mind again. The White Rain Energizing Citrus left my hair feeling and looking greasy after that last scalp wash. So yesterday, after just one day, I did a full length wash in the shower - acv rinse, Suave Daily Clarifying Conditioner, Suave Extra Body Conditioner, Elasta QP and Pantene Pro-V. Followed by some jojoba. Back to normal.

I'm thinking that maybe the conditioners I've tried that have left my hair feeling greasy might be ok for a third rinse, but they don't have enough cleansing capabilities to offset the oils they leave behind.

Gotta do my roots. I could let it go another week, but I'll be traveling for a week and a half, and the last thing I want to try to do is touching up my roots in a motel room somewhere. Yeeh.

But, on the plus side, I've installed some new mirrors in the bathroom, so I should finally be able to see what I'm doing when I'm trying to daub my scalp in the back and side back.

Howdy, just thought I'd drop a note to mention that I use White Rain Energizing Citrus too, and it leaves my hair kinda greasy as well if I don't use a shampoo with it. So you're not alone with that one. 

Have fun in Montana! And I don't like swimming pools either. I prefer lakes myself. 

Here's the deal: not only have I been really busy, but I've been putting a lot less effort into hair care, so there wasn't all that much to write about. What I've been doing is a single CO wash with a suitable conditioner, then after the hair is dry, I touch it up with a little jojoba. Not very exciting, but very time-efficient.

Two conditioners I've been happy with lately are VO5 hydrators (contains silicone) and VO5 free me freesia. Both work great as a single CO wash.

Another thing I've done is to figure out how fast my hair mass is increasing. Since I know the area of my ponytail, it was a simple thing to multiply that times my hair growth rate (which we'll assume is currently 1/2" per month) to get my hair mass increase - .36 cubic inches per month, or about 4 cubic inches per year. This is the rate at which the size of my chignon is increasing. Indeed, it has been noticeable that my chignon in increasing in size, even though my length has been held steady by trimming the thinner ends.

So if I allowed my hair to grow to floor length, it would be about 38 cubic inches (from about 16 cubic inches now), gradually increasing as I trimmed out the damaged part, to finally reach about 45 cubic inches.

We'll see.

I consider it to be a major factor. Among the things I am doing differently now that I have achieved enlightenment:

• CO wash only. I haven't bought shampoo since the first time I CO washed. This also means I condition every time, which I wasn't doing before. Often I use more than one conditioner, too.
• No more blow drying, even if I wasn't getting it completely dry.
• Wearing my hair up, or at least in a ponytail.
• Not letting it get mats. This is a biggie. So I no longer wear my favorite fuzzy pullover when my hair is down, and I detangle much more frequently.
• Frequent oiling. Coconut oil or jojoba.

Most of the people I know of who were unable to CO wash were using unsuitable products. Every brand makes a great many products, and you can't predict which will work by the brand name. Those I like (so far) are VO5 Free me freesia *and* Hydrators, Suave Daily Clarifying, and White Rain Extra Body.

The worst were also by these same brands, products which left the hair feeling simultaneously greasy and unconditioned, with dry ends. Gross. I read postings by women who used these same products that didn't work for me, had the same results as I did, and concluded that CO wash didn't work for them.

YMMV.

Things have been changing very slowly for me, but now that I think about it, the changes I've accrued merit writing down.

Like Anais, I stopped measuring. I was the worst tape measure addict, too. I want to wait til my hair is at tailbone, is that too much to ask? I figure that will be in two or three months.

But finally my hair feels long again. It's longer than it was before my traumatic 1-1/4" trim at the end of July, and it seems to be growing at a reasonable pace, judging by the frequency that I need to touch up my roots. I can also measure it from the floor up, using a yardstick. By this method, it's 3/4" longer than it was for that trim, so I probably am growing at about 1/2" average per month.

As I said, I still color, and I am still convinced I was meant to be a redhead. The color's still looking good.

Washing is a bit different now. When I shower and wash, I first wet my hair with a rinse of 1/2 cup vinegar in 1 quart of warm water. I then wash with VO5 Free Me Freesia, VO5 Hydrators, Suave Daily Clarifying Conditioner, or White Rain Extra Body (which I am going to phase out as I no longer consider it sufficiently cleansing for every wash use) and scrub my scalp well. I then apply Elasta QP Intense, for damaged hair (why take a chance? I color  ), leave for 2 minutes, then Hollywood Beauty Cholesterol Creme, which I leave for another 2 minutes. I then apply Pantene Pro-V as a finishing glaze. While wet I then apply jojoba or an oil blend I have concocted.

This past week I decided to try scalp wash every day til I got the hang of it, as washing the length (and waiting for it to dry) is getting to be a drag. I put my hair in a ponytail off the top/back of my head, and pull it out about 4" off the scalp. I band it as tightly as possible, and braid the length. Then I band this with a ponytail holder that is linked to another. The free ponytail holder gets hung on a hook over my kitchen sink, so the braid is out of the way. I hose with the sprayer, wash once with Suave DCC, rinse, and I'm done. Only the top third of my hair is wet, and it makes a huge amount of difference in drying time and comfort.

I'll bet this operation looks ridiculous.

How long can one go without full wash, not working a dirty job or consorting with smokers?

I broke down and washed my hair in the shower on Thursday night. I wanted to scrub the roughness off my feet, and the long shower seemed better than sitting with my feet in a bucket.

I have decided that White Rain Extra Body doesn't clean well enough for CO wash, after using it for several days in a row. Almost good enough, but the hair looks a bit greasy at the roots the next day. Now I need to figure out what I'm going to do with four bottles of it...

I felt an uncontrollable urge to trim today, so I tried Feye's method of trimming.

http://members.fortunecity.com/feye/trim/

I didn't want to lose any length and my ends look healthy, but a few irregular hairs sticking out at the bottom were getting to me. I ended up cutting only the hairs that were longer than most, and losing no length at all. Next time I need a trim, I'm definitely going to do it myself.

I was reading on another site about the experiences of other women doing scalp washes. They seem to use shampoo but no conditioner, and since my scalp had been feeling less clean lately (due no doubt to the fact that you can't massage it all that well during a scalp wash), I decided to try this.

All I can say is, don't try this at home. My hair hadn't been especially tangly since I started to supercondition it, but boy it brought back memories of back when I had to brush mats out every few hours. Even reapplying jojoba to the nape and hairline had only a temporary effect. I'll never do that again.

I've discovered cocoa butter. When you melt it and apply it to the skin, it goes on very thinly with no greasiness, and when you add jojoba to it in the melted state, it feels even nicer. I put some on my ends, actually a little too much, but after it cooled and I brushed it out it didn't have that sticky oily look.

I had a vision while in my shower of the perfect shower. First, it would be one of those giant custom stalls you see in the fixture brochures. It will probably be 4' x 6', or maybe a bit larger, as it needs to be large enough for the comfy lawn chair I'm going to put in there. So after I do my wash, and put on a conditioner that benefits from staying in the hair, I put on a cap to protect the hair, put the controls on "heat" and "steam", and relax for 15 minutes. Then, after I rinse it out, I can put in my Hollywood beauty cholesterol cream condioner and repeat the relaxation cycle. So it would be kind of like an all-purpose spa as well as a shower.

I'll have to get my hair minions on this right away.