The Curly Girl Method

Something that often surprises people who haven't known me very long is that my hair isn't straight. I wear it straight 99% of the time, but my hair is naturally wavy/curly. My dad has extremely curly hair {he and his brother both had Afros in the 70s}, and my sister and I both inherited his curls - although my sister's hair is curlier than mine.

My uncle and me - look at how tight his curls are!

I don't often wear it curly because I don't really feel like I know how to style it where it looks good, but I am often frustrated with the time and effort it takes for it to look good straight...only to go outside and the humidity to cause it to frizz or go wavy.

I don't have many pictures with curly hair...not a great picture to see it.

But you can see how it looks more frizzy than anything else.

Well, the other night I was on IG and saw a story from a friend's sister and her curls looked BEAUTIFUL. She mentioned she was using the 'curly girl method', but I had no clue what that was. Fast forward an hour, and I have watched several YouTube videos, added numerous products to my Amazon cart, have heard words I've never heard before {co-washing? low 'poo?}, and am very overwhelmed.

BUT I'm also really intrigued and interested to see what my curls can do.

There's a book you can buy, but so far, I'm not going to get it because the internet has a million resources!

Here's what I know so far:
1) For 30 days: no brushing and no heat tools - easy enough since I already do that when I wear my hair curly
2) I need to alter my hair-washing a little - so most people use shampoos/conditioners with alcohols, sulfates, etc. but I don't. BUT this can lead to build-up, so I actually need to use a shampoo with sulfates to strip off the build-up first and then go back to my natural shampoo. I have felt like my hair can sometimes still feel greasy even after washing it so this makes sense!
3) Leave-in conditioner and product - I need to get leave-in conditioner and a new curl cream. The one I currently have {that I don't love} is chock full of crap ha. I also need to use way more than I have been!
4) Styling - I also learned why my hair often looks 'crunchy' and how to fix that, so I will make some updates to the styling step!

Another thing I had to do was figure out my curl type - 

there are lots of charts out there!

I think I am a 2B/2C, but we'll see what happens to my curls in 30 days.

So I'm embarking on this journey and will report back in 30 days!