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I’ve been using the Curly Girl Method for about 10 days as of right now. If you haven’t seen it already, check out the post titled Is your Straight Frizzy hair supposed to be wavy? to see the results I had from just plopping and scrunching my hair in the shower, before trying the curly girl method.

I have been doing ‘squish to condish’ on my hair, and plopping since then (about 2 weeks ago?). For the past 10 days or so, I’ve been using curly-girl approved products. I’ve been using Shea Moisture Raw Shea Retention Shampoo (about $9.99 at Meijer) on my scalp, Suave Essentials Tropical Coconut conditioner (about $2 at Walmart & Meijer) on the rest of my hair and rinsing it out, and then using Kinky Curly Knot Today leave-in (bought on amazon for about $13) as my leave-in. I started off using Aussie Instant Freeze gel (about $2.50 at Meier) but it only lasted me about 5 washes, so last night, for the first time, I used LA Looks Sports gel (I bought on Amazon for $6 or so for the 8oz bottle because it was not in stock at Meijer. Mistake! The BIG 20oz container is about $2 at Walmart). I ordered the xtava black orchid diffuser attachment for my hair dryer and have diffused my hair the last two washes because it was taking 8+ hours for my hair to air dry after plopping! The XTava diffuser is not universal, but it fits any blow dryer with a 1.8 inch barrel, and my Revlon 18752 blow dryer works with the xtava diffuser because that is its size.

We went camping Friday and Saturday. I washed my hair Friday morning, with the goal of waiting until I got home on Sunday morning to wash again, so I didn’t have to deal with my hair while camping. My hair got SO tangled! I believe it was because on Friday I wore a hooded sweatshirt, but the back of my head had this terrible, massive tangle by dinner time, less than 12 hours after I had washed it. The Suave conditioner does not seem to work well with my hair, so it was not helping me untangle it even though I used handful after handful of conditioner in the shower. I wound up using a bunch of my leave-in conditioner but that still didn’t help enough, so I used a non-curly girl approved conditioner in order to get the tangles out. S that was really unfortunate. But, even before that happened I was feeling like the suave conditioner was not right for my hair. It feels more manageable when simply wet than it does after I add in the Suave essentials tropical coconut. It’s like my hair gets friction or static as soon as I add the conditioner in. I’ve read on forums that a lot of peoples hair is specifically sensitive to coconut ingredients. So I am going to try to buy some Suave and V05 CG products that do not contain coconut to see if that help. I’m hoping to find a conditioner that is very cheap but works well because my hair is so long that I need to use a ton of conditioner. This week I also purchased curl-clips to help add volume to the top of my head. It tends to go flat on top, but doing ‘squish to condish’ upside down has helped with volume in that area, too. Originally I was doing squish to condish with my head tilted to the sides, in hopes of helping to maintain the part in my hair, but it wasn’t maintaining the part anyway.

My hair before I started squishing or plopping:

This one below was my first wash after using curly girl approved products.

My last three photos are all of my hair today (5th or 6th wash on curly girl method)

And the before and after curly girl method 1 week photos, side by side.

I want to get a haircut because my ends are split, and I think that makes it less manageable. I also want to try a new conditioner. Currently, my waves or curls do not hold well vernight, so I will eventually need to look into a method for refreshing my second hair curls. I suspect this will be a long journey to find the exact products and method that works best for my hair, but I feel like I am on the right path.