The Tidbit

I’ve worked in a variety of roles in my travels. From journalist to publicist to professional hospital patient for television, I’ve worn several hats. 

My first “real” job (e.g. one that had a weekly schedule and the same coworkers all the time) was a receptionist at a salon. Despite the fact that I, to this day, am very low maintenance with my hair, I did learn a lot about the strands that grow atop our heads. 

One thing that stuck with me, and comes to mind every time I wash my hair, is a tip I learned while I was training to shampoo clients (a skill that I never mastered — while I could lather and massage a noggin, the water hose and I didn’t get along and I’d often water board clients’ ears). Essentially the tip was to think of the hair as skin and to think of shampoo as soap and conditioner as lotion — which, kinda makes sense, right? 

So you want the hair to be nice and drenched prior to applying shampoo. For the best results, you don’t want to just plop the shampoo on your head and scrub from there, you want to pour the shampoo into your hands and rub them together to create a lather. Then you want to apply to the head and get all up in the business. Once it feels you’ve hit every strand, rinse it as well as you can. This is like how you wet your skin before applying soap. You scrub-a-dub-dub  and then rinse. 

Then, like after you wash your hands, you want to remove as much water from your hair as possible. You likely wouldn’t apply lotion to a sopping wet hand, and the same rule applies to conditioner. So, before applying conditioner, get out as much of that excess water as you can and then lather with conditioner. Because the conditioner is moisturizing and not cleaning, it doesn’t need water to work. And, again like lotion, you want it to sit in your hair for a few minutes so it can really do its job. 

Before learning this, I would just squeeze shampoo into my hair, rub, and then rinse before immediately throwing in conditioner that would sit there for 30 seconds before a final rinse. Thinking of my hair as my hands has genuinely helped the health of my hair and has made me be able to go longer between washes. 

Give it a try and see if it helps you!

P.S. Another thing that’s made a huge difference for my hair is using a leave-in conditioning spray and a little keratin oil. I use both just before brushing my hair and let it air dry a bit before using my blow dryer brush. It makes my hair look, feel, and lay better and also makes it feel less weighed down. Good luck!