Greetings brave readers! Have you returned to continue the trek through my hair-y blathering? Welcome then and let us begin part two…
Brushing/Detangling – This is serious business.
Oh the knots I work myself into.
I first saw the love of my life on a YouTube hair tutorial (I love you torrinpaige!). My beloved Tangle Teezer©. This hand-sized plastic beauty performs like no other. Really, I have not dreaded detangling once since I started using it.
As in part one, gentle is the key. I start detangling from top to bottom and push the tangles about ¾ of the way down my length, then I switch to working from the bottom up to get the tangles and loose strands all the way out. Gently.
Another tool I have used for detangling and would recommend you try if it sounds like fun is a wooden comb. Wooden combs are good for detangling because they do not have seams like other combs may have. The seams on a comb can catch your hair and cause damage. In addition to that wooden combs are beautiful and just nice to look at.
Products. Cha-ching!
My hair can sometimes misbehave and be prone to frizzing. After I detangle my hair and while it is still wet I like to apply a small amount of anti-frizz serum. My favorite serum is the John Freida Frizz Ease. It can be expensive but it lasts me a long time, smells good, and works well to keep my tangles and frizz away!
I rarely use other products. When I do it is mostly for special occasions – my wedding, ballet performances, and the like. My goal in using many products is usually to very strictly keep my hair in a style. If I use a product I am not messing around ya’ll!
Aussie Miraculously Smooth Gel is one that I like to use. I have actually been using it daily on the stepdaughter for school and it is great because it gives a pretty good hold without being stiff and chunky! There is no scent to it so that can be a plus if you are sensitive or do not want to be wearing too many different smells.
Garnier Fructis Style Full Control Anti-Humidity Hairspray Ultra Strong (4) is another one I like. It works to keep things in place without getting crunchy. Light but strong is how I would describe it. At the moment I use this hairspray the most on my eyebrows actually. This one smells nice and is not too strong or overwhelming.
Aussie Mega Hairspray is another I have used for dance performances and it holds very nicely; this one can definitely be applied to the point of HAIR DOES NOT GO ANYWHERE if you are looking for that. Very good for dance performances. This one has a distinctive fragrance to me. Maybe it is just because we used SO blasted much of it during “The Nutcracker” but it is definitely there and very recognizable in my opinion. It is not a bad scent though.
That is all I have sitting on my bathroom counter at the moment. I will definitely continue to go through more of the products I use or have tried and write up some more thorough reviews!
Protective Styles
If you have long hair you would like to keep nice or if you are trying to grow your hair out long it can be nice to use “protective” hair styles on a daily basis. These hairstyles keep your hair up and out of the way so it can grow without being excessively damaged along the way. If you are using protective styles to keep your hair nice or to grow it out longer you will want to change it up from day to day and not just use one hairstyle all of the time. If you use any hairstyle day in and day out you will be putting stress and pressure on the same parts of your hair over and over again causing damage!
Some protective hairstyles I use frequently are:
Braids – English, French, Dutch, Rope
Buns – Pencil, Cinnamon, Nautilus, Rose, Braided
Styles that keep your hair up and out of the way without too much rubbing and that do not cause excessive damage while trying to achieve the up-do are what you are going for.
Trimming and S&D
I cut the husband’s hair and anyone else’s hair who wants me to, but I will only trim mine. I have no plans to cut or have anyone else cut my hair anytime soon. If I did plan on having my hair cut I would probably have someone else do it because I am not confident that I could do a good job, not being able to see the back of my head and all. I think the longer your hair is the easier it is to trim by yourself, though. I will also cut my own bangs (because that is the front of my head!) but that is also really just a trim for me right now too.
Average hair growth is about 4-6 inches per year. So when you go to trim off “only 3 little inches,” just remember that is six months of hard-earned growth. Sometimes though you have got to do what you have got to do, boo. I always mourn the tiny bits I manage to trim every so often. Honestly the frequency of my hair trims is based on my mood. If I am feeling good about how my hair is looking I will just let it be. If I feel like the ends are starting to look too scraggly and a good conditioning does not help I will probably opt for a wee snip.
S&D stands for Search and Destroy. I found out about this technique, used to get rid of split ends, on a hair forum I frequent. Basically you sit in good lighting with a pair of hair scissors and Search for split ends then snip them off (Destroy) one hair at a time. The advantage to this technique is that you can get rid of split ends without, hopefully, losing too much length. The disadvantages are that it can be time consuming and you need to have decent enough eyesight to accomplish the task.
How to Measure Hair
Another funny thing you might not know is that there is a “proper way” to measure your hair! It can be fun to track the length of your hair when you are growing it out. When I started growing out my hair it was already quite long. My starting length was about 35 inches and as I stated in part one my current length is about 45 to 45.5 inches. Over six years only 10 inches of growth is not a ton, but sadly I have definitely trimmed off many, many inches over this time.
To measure my hair I use a soft measuring tape like the kind used for sewing. I brush my hair straight back and place the end of the measuring tape at the edge of my hair line in the center of my forehead. Then I carefully align my hair and the measuring tape so neither is bunched up strange and make my way down to the bottom of my hair to read the results. Gosh, I hope this makes sense. Let me know in the comments on via the contact page if you need pictures or videos because writing out some of these things is questionable in my opinion!
To get comparable measurements you will want to make sure you measure your hair in the same “condition” every time. This means if you measure your starting length when your hair is wet, you will want to measure your progress length when your hair is wet. Or if you measure your starting length when your hair is dry, you will want to measure your progress length when your hair is dry. Hair is a bit more stretched out, “longer,” when it is wet.
Sleeping In Style
My hairstyle while sleeping is very important to me. This is because I do not like to have nightmares about being strangled nor do I like waking up unable to move because the husband is laying on my tangled mess of a do.
My preferred sleeping style is a braid. I have heard of others sleeping in a bun but I do not know how they manage it. A single braid is more comfortable to me, but I have also slept in two braids (one on either side). English, French, Dutch, rope– any braid will do. Because I braid it every night for sleeping I try to change the position of my hair tie on the end so I am not causing too much damage in the same spot.
Well my lovely friends I think that just about does it with regards to my basic long hair care routine, thank you for sticking with me! I hope you found something fun or at least interesting along the way. Please leave any thoughts, suggestions, and questions in the comments – especially if there is anything you would like to see in the future!
Christine xoxo
The Mrs and The Mom 