Hard water + sugar scrub + lemon juice + a bit of cheating
I've decided to post because I usually end up gabbling at people in the comments, using! lots! of! exclamation points!! and leaving out some/most/all the important information I wanted to include in the first place. So I thought it would be easier if I just had a tl;dr carefully written post that I could link people to. Bear in mind that my "knowledge" of the subject isabout 90% reading through the tags on here, and 10% my own measly experience. Bold stuff is the most important.
This is not strictly no_poo, but maybe some of the observations could be helpful to someone, somewhere. Mods, make of that what you will.
After trying out different stuff these last...three?...months, I've finally come to a routine that goes something like this:
1. Sugar scrub.
[I use just sugar, no additions. I've been using it on my skin for a pretty long time now as peeling, and on my scalp almost the whole time I've been no_pooing, and it works just fine.]
About 1 cup of sugar, distrubuted where needed. Scrub scrub scrub scalp at most oily places (nape of neck, near forehead, parting).
Rinse throughly. Water temperature seems to be one of the keys to dealing with hard water, so the higher the better - but no scalding!.
There's still wax on my hands and I can't run my fingers through my hair at this point, but that's what the lemon juice deals with (that, and re-acidifying the scalp, which apparently is very important).
2. Lemon juice.
[Currently, I use freshly squeezed juice from 2 1/2 lemons, but before my Big Break, about 1 1/2 lemons was enough. I don't think lemon juice keeps all that well outside the fridge, but with a hand juicer, it takes seconds to make a new batch. Dump the seeds, pulp etc. back in your juice - for some mystical reason, I swear it cleans the hair better with all the junk left in. Apple or other citrus fruit juices can be added. I would be careful with honey, as I think it contributes more to frizzing than conditioning (and is decidely non-vegan).
Here's where the cheating comes in: I have really hard water. For a while I used just the sugar&juice combo, but my hair more often than not felt icky while still wet, and looked not greasy, but just kinda dirty when it dried out, no matter how hard I scrubbed or how hot the water I used was. (TMI: My hair started looking damaged near the scalp pretty fast, but worse, I had all these weird dermatological reactions, let's PC it this way, all over my scalp. Short version: don't hurt your scalp.) I finally got so exasperated I went back to normal shampoos. Here's the thing: on the first day of being back to the bad ole ways, the whatever-it-is (SLS, probably) that shampoos have that natural methods don't cleaned off all the stuff that was making my hair look dirty (from reading the tags, I suppose this is the stuff that happens when sebum and hard water meet), but had not stripped all the oils away. I could see how different my hair really was for the first time - shinier, springier, and there was a lot more time between washes (well, for me, anyway - having been a person who was slowly leaning to this side of two washes a day, washing my hair every two days, with the hair still looking acceptable, was new). More shampooing, and immediately I had to shampoo more often, and my hair resumed its old "bad 80s frizz" look.
I finally went to the drugstore and bought shampoo (although it definitely has SLS, it's clear, which I read somewhere is a good thing? and has a decidely shorter list of ingredients & best before date than my roommate's shampoo) and conditioner (no cones, but a few freaky names I haven't deciphered yet) there (I haven't yet found a shop here that sells organic shampoos) .
The compromise is this: adding a tiny squiggle of shampoo to my lemon juice. Well, it works.]
Distribute where needed, scrub, rinse thoroughly.
I don't do the final cold water rinse, because cold hard water always, without fail, does something weird to my hair. I think it's a good idea for your veins&heart to rinse off your body with cold water, though - I know I always feel better.
3. After
Brushing out: Because this is what I have on hand, I use a plastic circular thick brush to brush out all the pulp (though I don't doubt a fancy fine-toothed comb or a boar bristle brush would be better) and then brush again with a tiny wooden brush to get a bit of volume, etc.
Conditioner: At this point, I use a tiny bit of Cheater's Conditioner on the ends of my hair, but maybe a tiny bit of oil (not olive) would be good too (other no_pooers will have to verify this thesis).
Important: Get all the pulp & seeds off the bottom of your tub. Rinse off your tub, the wall, the shower curtain, the shower cabin, what have you. Towel off the floor (you can keep a seperate towel just for this job.) I'm sorry if I sound like I'm talking to idiots, but that stuff can really stick and ewww. The stuff can also clog up your drains, so between you and your drains, put either one of those meshy things - probably works best - or one of those things that look like a tiny colander - I have one of those, and it's fine.
Notes:
- I don't believe in stretching out days during the so-called detox period. If you've been using normal shampoo and you switch to natural products, it will be a world of difference for your hair anyway, and it will adjust itself eventually - you'll see that you don't need to wash it so often.
- Skipping the sugar, the pulp or the scrubbing usually means having "unsatisfactory results".
I may have overdone it with the tags :P.