Regimen Building

This post is designed for me to contain my PJism. I have so many hair products that I do not know what to do. I decided that if I focused on a regimen, I can see what products works for me and which ones do not. This will take some time as I have to get use to certain products that my hair loves in order to compare it to other products- hence the purpose of a hair journey anyway!

Here are a few questions to consider when building a good hair regimen (I am not sure where I got these questions from-if you know, please leave a comment so that I can reference them. Special thanks though).

1. How often do you wash your hair?
I have been washing my hair between one to three times a week- Sometimes I'll use shampoo and conditioner and other times I'll just co-wash my hair.

2. How often do you deep condition?
I know I should deep condition with every wash- but I don't. On the weekends, I'll deep condition by pre-pooing overnight using conditioner and oils. During the week, I'll deep condition without heat for at least 15 minutes. I am working on DCing with heat twice a month. [Last DC was yesterday and the time before that was Nov. 11th so I completed by 2 DC's this month].

3. How often do you do protein treatments?
When I was relaxed, I did regular protein treatments which was at least every two weeks, before relaxing, and after relaxing. Now that I am natural I, I have done a protein treatment because I am trying to maintain moisture in my hair...guess I should really do one soon.

4. How often to you clarify?
This is an easy question. Once a month- I clarify at the beginning of each month to give my hair a fresh start.

5. How do you style your hair to retain the most length?
Since being natural, I have not styled my hair to retain length because my hair is too short. While relaxed, I use to do updo's and buns to keep my hair off of my shoulders. With my TWA, my next style to help me retain length will be box braids or kinky twists.

6. How often do you trim your hair?
I use to have a fear of scissors and rarely trimmed my hair. My big chop was October 7, 2012. I do not think I will trim my hair until April 2013 which will be when I am six months natural. My hair will remain textured/kinky and not flat ironed when trimmed, since I do not plan on wearing my hair straight.

7. How often do you do a hot oil treatment?
I do not do hot oil treatments. Shame on me I know. I will try to incorporate hot oil treatments into my regimen.

8. How often do you rotate your shampoos and conditioners?
As a product junkie, I rotate my shampoos and conditioners all of the time because I want to try this one or that one. This is not good because as I mentioned above, I do not know what products my hair likes or does not like. I cannot tell when my hair does not like something, because I do not know when it likes something. I plan on rotating my shampoo and conditioners every other week (for conditioners) and every other shampoo/ month (for shampoo- depending on when I shampoo).

Now that I have reviewed and answered these questions, I am one step closure in building my hair regimen. I plan on using other products such as moisturizers and styling products on a monthly basis to see how my hair reacts to them- of course that is once I have at least three inches of hair to braid, twist, and style.

Answering these questions will help me to continue to track down or journal my hair journey so that I'll know what worked well, what did not work at all, and what products work well together.

HHJ

~Danie~