My Sunday reeked of Saturday. With the exception of attending church, I washed clothes, hit up the grocery store,  went to the mall with my daughter (picked out my wedding anniversary gift for my husband to get me), and made a couple of meals for the week. But that’s what happens when I take a rare moment of sitting on my but all day Saturday for a day of rest and internet marketing of my novels.

Daylight savings time didn’t help. By the time I realized I still hadn’t washed my hair, it was nearly 9pm! If I hadn’t skipped last week for a similar time crunch, I would have let my bun have another run on unwashed hair.  However, the reflection of my bun over the past week demanded otherwise.

Thirty minutes later I was jumping in the shower with my Spotify app playing my favorite Tamia playlist through a portable Bluetooth speaker my husband bought back in December.

4 Things to Know that De-stresses Natural Hair Living:

Washing ones hair does not have to be a “day”. Sometimes it’s just a few hours if that’s what you have to spare. That may mean that you have to skip a few steps of the process. And that’s okay!

2. Air drying and styling can be a combined effort. When I was wearing my bun I would wash my hair, chunky twist it with moisturizing products to dry overnight and then put my hair in a bun the next day. I broke it up like this primarily because I deep conditioned for a few hours (see #3). Last night, I added curl defining cream to my moisturizing products (and flat twisted my hair for the night. Twist out ready to go in the A.M.

3. It’s okay to skip the deep conditioning (or hot oil treatment) if you don’t have time. For the last four weeks that I’ve been bun’ing it up, I’ve deep conditioned after every single wash. Got that bright idea from a You Tuber providing her tips for protecting her hair throughout the winter months. Nothing wrong with it but reality is that you don’t always have time for that 30-60 minutes. If you’re anything like me, you’re prone to get caught up doing something else ad then that 30-60 mins becomes 2-3 hours. Yikes!

4. It’s not necessary to use every product geared towards natural hair all of the time. Granted those are the best but if you’re in a crunch and have depleted all of your good stuff, a brief interlude with products of the past (before natural) won’t kill you.

These may seem pretty mundane but situations like last night used to drive me up a fence! Either I would have been up all night trying to get through 10 steps or I would have woke up stressed about how I was going to style my hair in the morning for work.

So for my newbie naturals or those teetering on the fence of coming over to the natural side, ever 20 minute long You Tube video of a naturalista pre-pooing, washing, conditioning, deep conditioning, air drying, moisturizing, sealing, styling–whew!–does not have to be your reality.

Naturally Yours,

L.A.