Another try at water-only washing

OK, we have the great big thread on going pooless: https://permies.com/t/6347 I've read it all, and participated a little the first time I tried this. But it's too long to reread and a lot of the stuff doesn't apply. Like, I'm not sure that washing with baking soda and rinsing with vinegar really counts, though I guess it has to be more eco-friendly at least.

Anyway, I'm trying this again. I last used soap on 13 August. My natural inclination (or training, whatever) is to use plain castile bar soap and a mild shampoo every morning. What I'm doing instead is using hot water (only warm if you like it really hot), and massaging my scalp in the shower while it dumps onto my head, trying to get any amount of dirt-laden sebum to leave that I can. When I'm done with that, I have an almost desperate need to get soap to cut the gunk of my fingers, but I'm fighting that and just use a terry washcloth instead. Then I scrub with that cloth. I pay a lot of attention to my armpits and my crotch, but give a quick scrub to everything that's easy to reach.

So, just over a week in, here are my results:

- I stink. Not badly, but not good. Maybe there are bacteria that will reestablish if I don't kill them off with soap, but it takes a couple of weeks. I've heard that (with no technical backdrop) so I'm trying. I think I can make it another week at least to give them a chance. Worse than my pits stinking is my hair. There is a miasma of staleness surrounding my head and stuck to my pillow. That last thing is the single biggest hurdle -- it's interrupting my ability to concentrate at work!

- I feel dirty. My face doesn't feel clean after I scrub. There's a residue in spots like my underarms where moving parts touch. My eyes feel a little gunky -- weird since I don't soap my eyes! (lol) And of course, most of all, my hair is like a sheep's wool, thick with sebum. And it's hard to brush into a tolerable state after which it's like I'm wearing a hard-hat made of wax and butter. All of these feelings seem like something I might just need to get used to, so I'm sticking with it for now.

- I'm using a lot more heated water. A *lot* more. My showers are at least twice as long as they are with a quick soaping. Maybe more than double! I work and I scrub and I massage and I pinch-pull, and since I never get clean, it's just a matter of eventually giving up and calling it done.

- My bath towel and my pillowcase stink. I'll need to change them more often (like, once a week or more instead of every 2-4 weeks) which will mean more laundry. (Unless these conditions change, which some people claim happens.)

- My wife is put off. She supports the experiment but wants to cuddle less.

- I'm spending something like an hour a day while sitting at my desk combing grease out of my hair. Yesterday, I started collecting instead of discarding it. It's equal measures gross and cool (see images below).

So, this isn't feeling very promising right now but I want to give it a fair try. I'm interested to hear any suggestions y'all might have for navigating this trial that stem from your own personal journeys.

I applaud your scientific spirit! (this thread did not go in the direction I expected it to!!)

Alas, my experiments with no-poo (with or without vinegar/baking soda) always were similar to this. I've done a few good long stints and everyone said "just hang in a little longer and your hair will stop making oil", and that just never happened. I felt like some proverbial dirty old greaseball and it never got better. Worse, my scalp didn't get ultra-moisturized from all this sebum-- it got horribly irritated (which to be fair happens to me anytime I don't wash my hair for more than about 4 days, no matter whether I use products or not). And I hear you about the amount of hot water used. Then there is the circular problem of how using that much hot water makes my skin wicked dry, so I need to put on oil or something (which attracts more dirt that needs to get washed off).

I wonder if some people are just better suited to only washing with water, or if it's something environmental. I know some folks do really well with only water, and good for them, but it is apparently not for me.

(that's a great comb you got there, btw)

My experience is that showering or bathing can actually feed the bacteria, increase sweating, and so on. Bacteria need moisture to thrive and so I find that the more I get wet, the more smell. (Well, we expect this of a wet dog!) It also tangles the hair.

For sweat, something to do is to use a cloth and wipe it off instead of washing it off. I find this more effective, especially compared with water alone, as that encourages more microbes, but still use underarm soap now and again which as we know works well. But not very much of it.

Another thing—people in days of old combed a lot more. It might have been the Tudor Monastery or perhaps Edwardian farm series where I saw it—people cleaned their hair by combing and there is a saying about a hundred strokes of the comb that refers to this practice of cleaning by combing. That is what I do. And oil does collect if not combed.

I haven't used soap or shampoo in years.  I think I must be closing in on 20 years;  when I initially made the no poo switch it took about two months and I had long hair and it was gross.  I wore a bandana constantly.  So all I can say is, it might take a while!  

I tried the no poo thing and might revisit it again in the future but for now I decided to just reduce how often I shower and use shampoo. Did find out that used coffee grounds instead of soap works wounders as a body wash for me. And soap on my face causes pimples and over time it stopped producing so much grease. But my hair just couldn't adapt! I tried for 3 months and my friends have officially dubbed me a crazy hippie from that stint. I think there's a way but I don't have the freedom right now to have gross feeling/looking hair with work and stuff right now.