Washing less frequently!

 Years and years ago, back in the 1990s I had a student who did not shampoo her hair. Sali Hughes, the Guardian’s resident beauty columnist (according to wikipedia) back in 2014 wrote about people not washing their hair: 

“When I was a teenager in the early 90s, there was a definite trend adopted by a specific type of hippy student I dated, who told themselves and those around them that hair was "self-cleaning". For weeks, even months, they would refuse shampoo, resulting in hair that emitted cheap cider and bong fumes wherever they went and gradually became lanker, greasier and flatter.”

That would be right time-wise for my student. And people I have spoken to about this, usually female friends and members of the family, have all reacted with a unanimous eeeuuuggghhh! But this particular student had beautiful, flowing curly, nay naturally ringleted, locks. Her hair never looked greasy or lank. She soaked it through in the shower just about every day and brushed and combed it. She just never used shampoo or any other ‘products’ on it. I was quite impressed but never plucked up courage to emulate her. No, I tell a lie, well, a partial lie. There was a time when I wore my hair very short and soaked it in the shower every morning and then sort of scrunched the natural curls into place. But I did not give up on shampoo altogether, just not every day.

The theory is that the more frequently you shampoo your hair, the more natural oils your scalp produces to replace what you have just washed out. Without shampoo your hair apparently reaches a natural balance. Maybe so! Personally, I wash my hair about once a week. It’s not so much the washing as the time I spend drying my now longer hair to my satisfaction. But Granddaughter Number  One and I agree that less frequent washing extends the life of the colour the hairdresser puts on your hair. 

Anyway, a kind of logical extension of that is the idea of washing your clothes less frequently, or in some cases not at all. Here’s a link to an article about a number of people who have taken that decision. One of them reckons to have gone six months without washing his clothes. Shirts and trousers I can maybe understand but underwear? That surely must be a different matter! But on the whole it’s good for the environment to wash clothes less frequently.

There you go.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!