I keep kicking around the idea of writing a piece about finding my "style" now that I don't work in an office anymore and I am officially a mother of children (seriously at least once a day I have an imaginary conversation where somebody asks me how many kids I have and I say, in disbelief, that I have two.) Who knows about that but I have been exploring very new and exciting worlds of not washing my hair since I quit my job. The reasons for it are fourfold:

1.) I am trying to grow my hair long. I have some sort of idea, perhaps misinformed, that washing your hair a lot damages it.

2.) Every few months now I pay someone some money to color a few parts of my hair a fun color (right now: blue--yes, yesterday I wore a shirt that matched my hair.) With every wash the color disappears, tragically, down the drain.

3.) One thing I was told extends the color of the dye is to rinse your hair with cold water, so now, to me, washing my hair means a cold shower, whereas just taking a shower from the neck down means no cold water.

4.) Sometimes showering can seem overwhelming to me in general so just taking a shower from the neck down speeds up my day by possibly 20 minutes.

I used to not be able to not-wash my hair more than every other day or so because it would get super greasy and my scalp would feel weird. But now, partially due to my gradual mastery of dry shampoo, and perhaps partially due to biology, it doesn't gets as greasy as quickly anymore.

I will wash it when I have to (usually after a night where I've slept on it weird and half of my hair is squiggly) but as I write I'm finishing up day seven which is absolutely a record for me except that time I went camping in the Canadian wilderness when I was in high school. The last time it was washed was on Wednesday when I got my new color put in. Friday morning it was kind of bent so I gave it a quick run through with a straight iron (I tried to apply it on large sections, maybe three or four pieces per side.) And since then I have just been running dry shampoo it whenever I feel like it. I like Batiste--my friend Catherine Gelera recommended it to me. Here is where my stay-at-home lifestyle suits this hobby, because if I do a bad job applying it I don't really care that much if my hair looks kind of powdered.

Here are my other hair-things I do in regards to my dirty-hair lifestyle:

• I won't tie it up while I'm exercising unless I know for a fact it will bother me (so a brisk walk doesn't require it but burpees do).
• I tie it back in the shower--I try to do a bun but it always falls out--and just keep my hair out of the water.
• I don't tie my hair back when I sleep. In fact, I wear a sleep mask. Also I use cotton pillowcases and you can pry those out of my cold dead hands (satin pillowcases just sound so slippery and weird to me.)
• Down is the new up. I used to default to a ponytail when I was just casual around the house but now I leave it down unless it's so awful-looking I know I can't go downstairs (but then, that day, I will default to the ponytail. Then it gets washed the next day.
• I'm using a deep conditioner when I do wash. It's part of my hair-growing routine. I wash with Abba Color Protection shampoo and then put in ColorProof Deepquench Moisture Masque, then leave it in while I do the rest of my shower. I have no idea if that makes any difference or not.
• I wish I were a master with the curling iron and could do cool loose waves but I think through lack of skill and lack of a desire to spend more than $40 on a curling iron, this will never happen.

I am aware that for a lot of women, this is is common practice and/or not worth discussing at all. (Men, of course, are fascinated.) But I feel like there some people out there who have always wondered if it is in fact possible to walk around and live the shampoo-free dream (without using herbs or oils oanything like that because that's not my thing), it is possible. Happy Women's History Month.