This information will be really obvious to anyone who knows haircare basics, and is readily available if you are aware of what to search for, but if you're like me and neglected to learn the absolute bare minimum of how to wash your hair your entire life hopefully it will be helpful.

I have fine type 1 hair which is naturally thin and on top of that, started prematurely balding at 17, so I've always figured there was no point to taking extra care of my hair since it would look shitty anyway, and focused on emphasizing my natural blessings. This was totally misguided, of course -- not only can haircare/styling make thin hair significantly less noticeable, but even if you had a monk's tonsure, you look more put together when what little hair you do have is clean and healthy-looking.

As a teenager, I realized my fine & thin hair would get greasy very quickly, so got into the habit of washing it every day. However, this would obviously dry out my hair, and by the next day it would look both dry AND greasy. I eventually reasoned that I should use very gentle shampoos that would only remove 'some of the grease', which was an idea I got from skincare theory. I thought I if I could just remove half the grease, I'd be able to strike a perfect balance where my hair looked clean but not dry -- and to be fair, this was somewhat correct, but the results lasted less than a day, and I was trapped in a constant cycle of maintaining the 'perfect grease level'.

I continued to do this routine for the next 10 years until someone recommended the Blowout Professor on Youtube, and his videos on how to wash your hair blew my mind, despite being extremely obvious in hindsight:

Rather than my 'perfect grease level' strategy, you should actually aim to cleanse deeply and remove all the grease -- so you can go longer between washes. This actually ends up being less drying and damaging in the long term. He recommended harsher shampoos than I would usually purchase and double-washing, and indeed I have been able to go an extra day between washes by changing my approach! (I do think his shampoo recs are still a bit too harsh for me, except for occasional clarifying, so I've settled on something in the middle).

Keep an eye out for accidentally dirtying your hair between washes. I started to notice many points during the day where I was accidentally dirtying my hair -- when it dragged against my freshly lotioned face/neck, using a towel or headband that had just been in contact with lotioned skin, touching/playing with it with unwashed hands. Most importantly, WASH YOUR BRUSHES!!! I can't believe I never did this, it's honestly disgusting. I now scrub my brushes with a toothbrush and cheap shampoo every 3-4 weeks.

You should aim to wash your scalp, rather than your hair. The hair nearest your scalp accumulates all the greasy sebum produced by it. According to BP, the back of the scalp is the dirtiest part of the head. You should try to keep the shampoo off your ends altogether.

At first, I didn't trust this because it didn't make sense to me that the ends of your hair don't get dirty enough to need washing from product buildup, swimming, sweating, and just being out in the world. But he claimed that with a stronger shampoo, just the suds briefly passing over the ends during rinse out should be enough. The small amount of "dirtiness" that accumulates on ends isn't usually all that greasy, it's general crud or product buildup, and comes off much more easily than the sticky grease near the scalp.

Indeed, I found this to be true. When I double washed with a harsher shampoo, I avoided getting the shampoo on the ends of my hair as much as possible (to be fair, I have chin length hair so not sure they can be considered 'ends') and the brief contact the suds had with the rest of my hair shaft was enough.

In fact, it was more than enough. It was still too cleansing for the ends of my hair, no matter how much I tried to keep the suds off of them. That's when I tried pre-shampoo hair oiling. At first I thought this was just a passing trend and it seemed like a waste of oil, considering you just wash it off. But you don't need a fancy oil that's extra good for hair (although if you have time to leave it to soak, that would be great!): in this case, the goal is just to make the ends of your hair "dirtier" before washing it.

The problem: the scalp is much greasier than the ends. So when double washing, even when trying to keep the suds on the scalp as much as possible, the ends still get too clean. You have to provide enough shampoo molecules to grab onto all the grease molecules at the scalp, but the ends don't have enough grease molecules to keep up -- so the natural oils that make your hair look soft and shiny are stripped away from the ends.

The solution: make the ends of your hair "dirtier" to get them closer to the scalp's grease level. Now the shampoo will grab the grease molecules you just applied instead of the natural oils, and you're able to cleanse the scalp as much as you need to without overly cleansing the ends.

I know this is all very obvious when written out, but keeping it in mind has been really helpful for me! My hair still doesn't look great, but it looks significantly cleaner and less straw-like and dull, and I can now wash every other day. I hope to get up to two days eventually!

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