A few years ago I gave up on shampoo and conditioner. I did. I gave up. I don’t normally believe in quitting things I start, but I made an exception in this case.

I’m not by nature a quitter either. No sirree. I’m not.

But I quit shampoo. Conditioner too. I know it hit them hard when I dumped them, but what’s a girl to do?? I was tired of all the extra junk I had to put up with just to get my dumb hair clean. I was chemical-ed out. Completely. Who wants chemicals on their head anyway??

Not me.

No sirree. I don’t.

I started using diluted baking soda, and I would “condition” with diluted apple cider vinegar. I noticed the ends of my hair were really gnarly and snarly.

Fast forward almost 2 years to this past January. A friend and I were talking about the weird things we do, like for example, drink apple cider vinegar and honey. Yup, we do. She mentioned she had researched using castor oil on hair to help it grow. She’d been wanting to grow it out, and it was slow going.

This piqued my curiosity so the next morning I research it too. I’ve been conditioning my hair with castor oil ever since. I don’t use it every day. Every 2-3 days or so I put it on dry hair, leave it alone for 3 hours and then I attempt to wash it out.

Let me tell you, water and oil don’t mix. Not even bathwater and castor oil. It takes some time and effort to get that all out. I’m not going to lie, at times I’ve resorted to using Dawn dish soap to get it all out. But I have to be careful because that is really drying. The last thing I want is very dry hair.

Trust me, it’s  not pretty.

My hair now, though, I love! It’s soft. It has more bounce and body than it has for a long,long time.