Every now and then I get an email or meet somebody who asks me how they can spend less time taking care of their natural hair. One young lady at a meet up told me that it takes her 6 HOURS to wash, condition, and style her hair every week. (Huh?!) I recently had a conversation with a cousin of mine who was lamenting her transition to natural because “it just takes so much work”. That comment always amuses me because I know women who spend upwards of 8-10 hours in salons gettin’ their hair “did”. (Read: “washed, straightened or weave”).
So I got to thinking…
Am I doing it wrong?
Folks I’ll be honest, I don’t have 8 hours of daylight to spend on my hair. Now I’ll admit, some things take a bit of planning, but unless I’m doing a henna treatment, (which I’ve whittled down to 4 hours), on average, I spend 2-3 hours on my hair every week. That’s wash, detangle, condish and style.
And my hair is THICK. Like if I just let it air dry, my kitchen is filled with little angry men with their fists balled up thick.
So here are 6 Tips that keep me moving, keep my style fresh and keep me on schedule.
Tip #1 – Overnight Conditioning I do agree that the longer I deep condition, the healthier my hair feels, but I really only have an hour or two a week to do it. So I often do it at night, while I’m sleeping, I’m conditioning! I deep condition BEFORE I wash my hair and now I use an olive oil treatment. So sometimes after I apply it I put a plastic bag on my head and wrap the whole thing up in scarf. In the morning I wash and detangle as usual. (This also works well with henna treatments
Tip #2 – Wet Your Hair Before You Shower I covered this in My New Hair Reggie, but we basically spend the first 5 minutes of every shower just wetting our hair before we wash it. Instead, I put my hair in big fat twists and use a pump bottle full of water to saturate my roots before I get in the shower. I often add shampoo using this method while standing at the sink too. That way when I get in the shower, half my reggie is done!
Tip #3 – Wear Protective Styles When I know I’m going to have a crazy week, or their is heavy rain in the forecast. Or, (God forbid) both are predicted, I usually make a decision Sunday night that I’m going to wear my hair in twists the whole week. After styling my hair in medium-sized twists I’ll wear them all week up or tucked. Some of my favorites? The Donut Bun, The Twisty Bun and The Pineapple.
Tip #4 – Twistouts Are Your Friend Now, you probably need medium-length hair to do really enjoy the benefits of this, but I still think shorter-haired gals can make this one work. The point it, two-strand twist-outs stretch my hair for length, and make it wavy for definition and texture. So this style is now my staple. It provides my hair with enough texture that even after 5 days of a twistout style, I can still do something cute with it. An exmaple is the Twist ’N Curl. (My hair is actually much longer now, and I rarely use the rollers so the whole things goes much faster)
Tip #5 – Accessorize! I don’t go anywhere without my thick banana clip or large hair comb (minimum 3.5”), or a thick covered ponytail holder. (I almost always have a few of these on my wrist, like some ’80’s pop reject or something). If the back of my hair is acting up I can grab the clip and up my hair goes. If the front gets fuzzy or just doesn’t wanna act right, I can easily just grab it and tuck it back with the comb. And lately, I’ve been totally into scarves. (But I’ll share that in a future post)
Tip #6 – Detangle, Condition and Twist While my hair is sopping wet in the shower I take it section-by-section and saturate it with my favorite conditioner. Then I take my shower comb and detangle it while it’s dripping wet, pulling the conditioner through. Right after I detangle I twist the section up in a large twist and move on to the next. When my head is all detangled and twisted I rinse the conditioner out with the twists still in. Then I finish my shower and squeeze them out. Then I use my trusty microfiber towel to gently squeeze each twist (about 10) dry. Now my hair is not only detangled, but already pre-sectioned for when I do my smaller twists for styling. (Neat huh?)
• How do you speed up your haircare reggie?
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