As a natural, my hair has become the icebreaker whenever I meet people of color, especially those transitioning to natural hair. Most naturals complain that natural hair takes so much of their time and they were better off relaxed. I say it doesn’t have to be so time-consuming especially if you can streamline your processes and save time.
Here is what I mean:
Simplicity
Find a routine which is simple, which doesn’t cost you hours of your day. For instance, at first I used to apply a deep oil treatment before shampooing my hair, then deep condition, and then protective style to stretch.
I decided to remove deep oil treatment as I did not see any positive impact on my hair and kept the deep conditioning*, which works much better for my time.
Find what works for you
I used to 2 strand twist my hair while wet to stretch it, this left my hair dry and created single strand knots. I still use the same products but changed to stretching by doing 2 French braids and I get silky stretched hair through this process. Two simple braids shaves off loads of time and my hair gets the stretch I need.
Find a style which serves a 2 fold process
For instance, I mentioned that I stretch my hair with 2 French braids then tie a head wrap to get my edges to lie down.
Afterwards, when my hair is air dried I can go out of the house and run errands; so my hair wash day does not confine me to staying indoors.
Do your own hair
I say this because I know naturals who go to the hairdressers for shampooing, deep conditioning, and stretching or straightening their hair.
If you did it yourself you will save the time you will spend at the hairdressers. You can even multi-task if you do it at home. For example, I love to clean the house while my hair is deep conditioning*. In my opinion, that’s making good use of your time and money.
What do you do to save time with your hair care?
Yes
Once I went back to the basics which my grandmother taught me wash it grease it and put it up no but when I was trying to do everything else that all these other naturals tell me yes extremely time consuming and expense plus by me doing just the basics my hair always smells amazing ☺️
yep keeping to basics is the way to go
it can be….if you let it. I keep it real simple. .1st wearing a satin bonnet will take you far, keep products at a minimal- I have 3-stylers(they are cheap & work together),
1-shampoo, 2 Conditioner(1-leave In applied every other day as a mist), & Oils.
The only things that take up a lot of time are styling and deep conditioning. It’s better for me to spend two or three hours on the weekend to put in two strand twists that I can wear for up to a week and then have a twist out that I don’t have to re-twist for a few days (my max is three days before it starts to tangle) that to spend an hour or so re-twisting every other night.
My hair is very dense so I have to make smaller twists if I want to get any kind of definition. I don’t skimp of deep conditioning, I do it for at least an hour every washday or else I’m setting myself up for failure sometime during the week. I may even add in a DC session mid week because I’ve noticed that the ends of my hair have been extra dry lately.
Washing and multitasking while conditioning are “easy.” Styling is the time-consuming part.