So my hair was dry, lank, ugly for too long, and then:

I know you are addressing Ceili, but this is what I I learned a few years ago from a book called Curly Girl, which is about managing thick, curly hair: Shampoo is not good for most hair types and just strips the natural oils out. I just a conditioner and not much of that. Rinse with water and follow with about a 1/4 cup of straight white or cider vinegar (never tried rice) and another water rinse to get rid of the odor. I dry my hair with a towel and then use work a small (@ tsp.) of olive oil through my hair followed by any mousse to control curl.
I have used egg yolk also, but I found a heat treatment of olive oil once to twice a month is better for shine. Plus my free range eggs are too expense to wear on my head,

Egg yolk - I buy the cheap eggs for my hair. I take off the bag/sac thingy around it, so it's just the inside, no white stuff at all, it will stick to your hair. My hair is medium length so I normally only use one, if they are smaller than normal I use two. I put a wee bit of water in it and just use like shampoo. It will lather a bit.. Rinse with luke warm water, hot water could 'cook' the egg. I leave the vinegar (you can use any type of vinegar) in for about a minute, I normally comb my hair just before I rinse it, and voila, clean soft hair. When your hair dries, you will not smell the vinegar but it does smell until that point.
A bit of a caution though... When first doing this it will take a while for your scalp to stop producing excess oil. Shampoos overstrip the oil and it takes a few weeks to normalize. So, you may have to do this a bit more often than I do now. The same can be said for any alternate treatment, including conditioner. I have very fine hair, conditioner won't rinse from my hair that well and it leaves the hair heavy and greasier looking than the egg.
Be careful if you use baking soda. If you use too strong of a mixture or too often it will kill your hair and make it straw like. Thus the very watery concoction I make and use.
I also use fine but coarse sea salt every few weeks to lift dead or dried skin if or when it becomes a problem.. Shampoo does this but the egg wont. It's also important to brush your hair often, it will pull the natural oils from your scalp to the tips of your hair.
Again, this is not a quick fix but a lengthy process... I don't mean to discourage you all, but you must know that it will take a while before your body will get back to normal. And no two people are the same. I would not use baking soda if you dye your hair either... Salt is great for your skin, no so great for hair when used too much...
I recommend reading sites on the net on the "No Poo" movement. Some really helpful advice and in some cases whole blogs devoted to the subject.

oh, I still use it once it a while. That's a styling product, not for cleaning.

cj - I colored my hair this morning, and when it was towel dry, I thought about what you said.

I have this bottle of neutrogina (sp?) bath oil, so I put maybe 3-4 drops in my warm hands rubbed hands together, then tossled through damp hair.
I'd had to use 2 rounds of shampoo to get the excess color out, and I think maybe this gave my hair that little bit of, not dirtiness, but not totally clean that one needs to style their hair properly.

I'm wearing my hair in a swing bob these days and it's more work than I like.

What I meant by that now older post is that I am trying to get away from the shampoo aisle, and using conditioner isn't getting away.

Oh yea, I got that. I knew what you meant.

How about going to the cooking section and getting some coconut oil?
It's in a solid(ish) state and it seems a little would go a long way.

Yeah, I know, chai. I was just checking I was up with the latest!

OK, I've read through all the posts here.
Checked what the folk in the know do ...
And I'm going to give Green Witch's conditioner & vinegar method a go later today, when I wash my hair. Sounds the easiest & most convenient to me.
Ceili's egg method certainly sounds like it gets brilliant results, but I suspect I'm much too impatient & lacking in commitment to stick with it.
As for the coconut oil treatment. Remember when a few of us tried Gautum's (the prince) tried & true method a few years ago? Gosh, how messy, sleeping with that in my head!
I'm sure it works, but, you know ...

Thanks for the information, everyone.

Verdict: Hmmm, not sure.
My hair felt very different, compared to (during & after) the usual shampoo & condition, though heavier, not nearly as limp. (I have extremely fine hair, though there's quite a lot of it.) It didn't feel as clean & soft after this "wash" ... but maybe that's something that you need to get used to when you don't use shampoo? I don't know. It'll be interesting to see if it needs more "washing" than usual.

I'll see how it goes.
I might try osso's "recipe" next.

hehe, i was a member of that experimental group. what a nuissance that was :-) and didn't work for me...had to wash my hair a few times and with shampoo, so i'd guess that was totally counterproductive.

right now i have olive oil on my hair and am contemplating vinegar.... straight up? diluted? any vinegar?

I'm hoping that you're not still sitting there with olive oil on your head, waiting for information about vinegar, dag.
If so, I'm sorry to inform you that I am as inexpert as you are in these matters ...
However, I assumed undiluted.
(1/4 of a cup, according to Green Witch's formula.)


(ps: Do you suppose Gautum was having us on? )

I think oil treatments are not meant for thin hair. Oils work best to condition thick or curly hair because of how the follicles are shaped. Oil will weigh your hair down too much. You still might want to use the vinegar rinse because it makes your hair shine by removing soap/conditioner and dirt that builds up.

Thanks, Green Witch.
That's good to know.
But I tried the conditioner/vinegar treatment. (without the olive oil after.)
It was dag who was using the olive oil treatment.

ha, well, wish i have read and asked more before i tried...but it can't be unhealthy, right? i do have a lot of hair, and it's wavy and of the frizzy kind, but probably also of the thinner kind. olive oil won't be for me. i tried vinegar as well, but not sure if i can see results. i only used shampoo once -- not enough after the olive oil, so i'll be washing hair in the morning, too. sigh. no perfect fix for me.

i do like to iron my hair...which is doing even more damage to them, feel like i have to feed them something if i don't want them to all fall out and run away screaming.

Hi Dag! Long time no see.If you have frizzy hair, you might try using aloe vera gel thinned with a bit of water. Put it on your hair after you've shampooed while it's still wet. Then dry and style your hair as usual.

Try the Moroccan oil or any other argan oil. Just rub a dab in your hands and work through your towel dried hair.

My grandmother used olive oil on her coarse gray hairs, it turned greenish
after a while. Vinegar rinses make hair really shiny, but that's about it.

well, it might be just a matter of habbit. i thought my hair was kinda damp and heavy, but it's only a feeling, it looked fine when i passed a mirror, shiny even. but i can't shake the feeling it's too greasy.

...anyway, i should be writing and not worrying about my hair. :-(

I went ahead and ordered some of that Moroccan oil stuff.

I went off bc pills about a year and a half ago and definitely noticed a change in my hair, not happy about it. I usually wash it about once a week and it's fine, shiny and bouncy and all that good shampoo commercial stuff, now I have a day or two of that, maybe. Washing more often doesn't help. I get the day or two if I wait a week or so between washings.

So today I put less olive oil on the hair (1 tbs?), left it in about a half hour, rinsed with hot water (yuck), and then 1 dollop of regular shampoo, which I left in all sudsy, um, three minutes. I had forgotten to pour out some vinegar, so went with the shampoo; which of course I was trying to get away from in the first place, but still, the hair is much better than usual again, even somewhat curly and lively.

Let me know how it works. I was a bit skeptical at first, as my hair is straight and fine - yet dry from coloring the gray out. Regular conditioners flatten it down, but this Moroccan oil is great, I love it!
---
osso, I have a Dutch friend who is into all these home remedies (she makes her own creams etc.) and she swears by yogurt. She brushes yogurt into her hair, wraps it with plastic wrap and a towel for good an hour and just rinses it out afterward. It leaves her hair soft and manageable (she says).
I haven't tried it, I like eating yogurt too much for using it on hair.

Yeh, I was planning on using my yogurt for Tzatziki Me Martho..

But I'll remember that.

Signed,
Curlylocks

Osso, See if your local library can get this book for you: