How I Went a Whole Week Without Washing My Hair

I have always been a wash my hair everyday kind of girl and honestly used to feel really impressed with myself if I managed rock second day hair once a week. However, with my wedding coming up in June, i’m REALLY trying to grow my hair longer. All of the bridal styles I love require super long hair. I’ve been trying to grow it out for a few years and was convinced it had reached “terminal length” … a kind of morbid term meaning it had grown to it’s longest possible length. I  was taking biotin and prenatal vitamins, avoiding the blow dryer at all costs, deep conditioning and using heat protectant spray when I curled or straightened… which i tried to do only once or twice a week.. I felt like I had tried it all. Except… cutting down on the frequency of shampooing. I really didn’t even think that was an option, because my hair gets too oily too fast. I started looking for alternate wedding styles that didn’t require such long hair. I didn’t love them… but I could make it work.

Then, as facebook does... it read my mind (and my search history). All of the sudden, every promoted post on my feed was about hair care. I stumbled onto a bunch of blog posts and BuzzFeed articles about healthy hair and the benefits of washing less often… or not at all.

I was very skeptical… but figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. And honestly, I’m obsessed with what my hair looks like on the 5th day of this experiment.

Day 1: I let my hair air dry and left it down for the day at school, mostly because I was lazy and didn’t want to style it... I pulled it into a scrunchy to sleep that night.

Day 2: This was a snow day… so I decided to try out a new way to curl my hair. In short, I separate my hair into a few scrunchies, curl the hair in the scrunchies with my THEORIE Saga flat iron and release the curls.  Refer back to my “5 Minute Curl” post if you want to know the details.

Day 3: I woke up with one of those really bad parts in the back of my head. For some reason, in my brain, I call this a “butt part” but really it’s more like a “bedhead part”. I got that little spot wet and used my blow dryer to fix my part. Then, I lightly sprayed my roots with my favorite OGX dry shampoo. I didn’t brush it, just ran my fingers through it. The style lasted all day. That night, I applied dry shampoo before bed, hoping it would have time to “soak in” and lose any weird texture overnight.

Day 4: My trick worked! When I woke up my hair had enough texture to easily style, but didn’t feel stiff or gritty like it can with fresh dry shampoo. It was getting a little tangled so I brushed just the ends. It pulled some of the tight curls a little looser. After a very busy day of working and cleaning the house… my hair still looked great for Valentines Night. I added just a touch more dry shampoo before bed again, but I don’t even know that I would have had to.

Day 5: Best hair day of the week. All I did was roll out of bed and run my brush gently from root to end. To set my style I sprayed my hair with usmooth flex finishing spray. Seriously, I got so many compliments on my hair today. To the right is a picture of my “day 5 hair". I am going to wash my hair tonight, mostly because I want to use my evanyc hair therapy session hair mask. Honestly, though I might have been able to rock this hair through the weekend.

I’m pretty impressed with how much I liked how my hair looked and felt throughout a week of not washing it. How many days do you go between washes? Got any tips or tricks for me?