The two hair products I actually use
After ten years of bathroom cabinets full of products, the simplification to two — and the small honest case for boring.
I had, for most of my twenties, a bathroom cabinet full of hair products. A shampoo for volume. A different shampoo for clarification, used once a week. A conditioner. A leave-in conditioner. A heat protectant. A texture spray. A hair oil for the ends. A small jar of styling cream. A dry shampoo. The cabinet was, by the end of the decade, a small museum of hair-care promises, most of them only partly kept.
I now use two products. A simple sulphate-free shampoo. A simple conditioner. The conditioner doubles as my leave-in when needed. The shampoo is used twice a week, not daily. The simplification took me about a year to arrive at and I am, two years later, not going back.
What I gave up
The volume shampoo, which had been giving me dry hair as a side effect. The clarifying shampoo, which I do not need with twice-a-week washing. The heat protectant, which I do not need because I have stopped using heat tools. The texture spray, which I had been using out of habit. The dry shampoo, which I now use about once a month at most. The styling cream, which I had been buying for years and almost never using.
The hair oil I still own and use occasionally — perhaps once a fortnight, on the ends, before sleeping. It does not live on the daily shelf. It lives in a small box with the other occasional products, and it is used when the hair seems to want it, not as a default.
What changed for the hair
Less than you would think. The hair is approximately the hair it was when I was using nine products. It is slightly less weighed down. It is slightly more responsive to its own natural pattern. It washes faster, dries faster, and styles itself more readily.
The smaller lesson
Most of the products I had been using had been chosen to solve problems that other products had been causing. The volume shampoo dried out the hair, so I needed the heavy conditioner. The heavy conditioner weighed down the hair, so I needed the texture spray. The texture spray made the hair flyaway, so I needed the styling cream. The system was, in retrospect, a small economy of products solving each other's side effects.
Take away the first product and the rest of the cascade goes with it. Two products is enough for most hair on most days. The cabinet is quieter. The morning is faster. The hair, somewhat surprisingly, is fine.