Curly Hair Maintenance for Beginners – A Guide to how I Manage my Curls

What is the Curly Girl Method?

Basically, this is a method of haircare designed to love your natural curls. It discourages harsh chemicals by recommending using a cleanser instead of a shampoo (or a cleansing conditioner), and wants to minimise any damage to your hair.

The basic tenets are not to use:

• Shampoo
• Heat styling tools
• Combs & brushes
• Sulfates – namely sodium lauryl sulfate & ammonium laureth sulfate
• Non-water soluble silicones
• Alcohol
• Fragrance
• Rough towels

There’s also guidance on how to apply product and drying your hair using patting or “plopping”. Also a basic rule is DON’T TOUCH YOUR HAIR. EVER. 😀 I am not good at that rule!

My Routine

As I said, I do an approximation of the CGM. I don’t use shampoo ever – I either conditioner wash, or use a mild cleanser. And I only ever brush / comb (more on this below!) when my hair is wet and has conditioner on. I am fairly good about products that fit within the method, and about using a microfibre towel. But I do sometimes need to dry my hair a bit, so I rub instead of pat, or diffuse with the medium heat instead of cold air. So I will never shame any of your bad habits 😉

I use two types of products for wash days, depending on what I’m after:

To condition, I use a method called Squish to Condish. Basically it’s what it sounds like – I squish my hair when it’s coated in conditioner! Lots of fun noises 😀 I also normally finger comb, but I do have a Wet brush that I use if it’s particularly knotty. The Wet brushes are pretty gentle and also good at keeping my hair drenched as I put on product – this is important for me as mine tends to frizz very fast! If you are going to brush, I recommend one of these or a wide toothed comb.

For styling, I stick with Cantu or Trepadora, and use either the Define and Shine Custard or the Papaya Slip Taming Potion. I do a combination of methods here – I rake it through with my fingers and also use a praying hands gesture to coat it. I then squish it all back up after.

I then use a microfibre towel to pat dry. I sometimes do something known as plopping. It’s a ridiculous name, but basically, you lay a towel or old tee out and then lower your hair down onto it with your head flipped down. Then you sort of roll and tie. Here’s a decent video on it, if you want to try. If I’m feeling fancy (barely ever) I also have some little metal clips I use at the roots to give my roots some volume, like this:

For ongoing maintenance, other than trying (and failing!) to not touch my hair much, the only other thing I recommend is a silky scrunchie – though I think mine’s actually satin. For sleeping I pile my hair into a super high ponytail on top of my head (think 80s and then go extreme!) and this stops my curls frizzing on my cotton pillowcases. I know you can use silk pillowcases too, I’m building up to that 😉 This method is called pineappling and may look silly but I definitely noticed the difference, and it keeps volume at my roots.

And that’s pretty much it! I’m fairly low maintenance as curls go 😉

Would you be interested in more posts like this? Let me know what you thought – will you try any of this if you have curly or wavy hair?