Honey Egg Shampoo III – A Success Story

My bathroom smells like breakfast at Starbucks. So does my hair.

You guessed it – I tested homemade honey egg shampoo for the third time.

Let’s recap.

After the first trial, my hair smelled like raw eggs until I washed it again a few days later. Other than that, I was absolutely stunned by the look and feel of my hair. So soft and shiny and all-around dreamy. *sigh*

The second time I tried it, I mixed 1 tsp each of instant espresso and cinnamon into the honey-egg-mixture before adding the lemon juice. One of these ingredients made me feel like my scalp had been ripped open and covered in coarse salt which a crew of tiny sadists kept rubbing into my head. It gave me itchy burning hell for the next couple of days. Other than that, I was still stoked about the way my hair looked and felt.

I initially thought it was the coffee that gave me all that painful grief. So I did not dare try it again with the odor-expunging yet presumably scalp-wrenching espresso in it, but neither did I relish the prospect of walking in a cloud of scrambled egg-smell for days. This was quite the predicament and made me resort to heavily diluted commercial shampoo for a while.

But then, one glorious day, Marzia kindly pointed out in her comment that the scalp crazing ingredient was most likely the cinnamon, more precisely the amount of it I had added. I hadn’t even noticed the dramatic increase in cinnamon from trial 1 to trial 2. Durr.

So today, I’m trying it again, without the cinnamon. Instead, I added powdered ginger.

Why? Well. I pulled it out of my spice cabinet thinking it was cinnamon, went “hm” upon noticing my mistake, did a quick google search, and found out that ginger juice is supposed to help with hair loss (as in against hair loss). I don’t suffer from a whole lot of hair loss, but I reasoned that at least it would do no harm to my scalp. And in it went, because, and I’ve mentioned this before, I can never leave well enough alone.

So I applied the following to my wet scalp:

1 egg

1 tsp instant espresso

1/2 tsp powdered ginger

1 tsp honey

> scrambled with a fork, then mixed with

4 tsp lemon juice

So far, and it’s been on my head for five minutes already, I haven’t detected any itching or burning like I experienced last time shortly after applying the shampoo.

25 minutes later…

Still no pain or anything. Not even slight discomfort. Heading into the shower to rinse it out with cold-ish water (so as not to have to pick scrambled egg out of my hair).

After a four minute rinse

Taking stock:

Smell – mostly coffee with the sliiiightest undertone of egg *eek*

Hair feel – alright, I guess. It’s still drying, but felt really soft with water streaming through it

Look – all good. Seems a little darker than usual.

Scalp – yup. Scalp’s still there and the tiny sadists with the salt haven’t shown up yet.

The next day

My scalp is all good, the egg smell has almost completely gone, and my hair is soft and shiny and gorgeous.

I’m thinking this is the one!

8 days later

Okay, I hope you don’t think this is gross, but today I really need to wash my hair again.  😯

I have used a boar bristle brush every other day over the last week, but haven’t washed my hair since last week’s HEGELS (honey, egg, ginger, espresso, and lemon shampoo).

I used to think that I’m simply not one of those people who can go for days on end without washing their hair without either going crazy or becoming a little bit disgusting (or all of the above), but I have to say – I’m none of those things today!

I hope.

Maybe some days, but not today.

Yes, I really need to wash my hair, and I will. But it’s not as smelly as it sometimes was after going for three days without washing it. It smells a little like wet wool.

Also, no dry or itchy scalp yet. That is usually a problem after two or three days, tops.

I’m amazed!

Since I don’t have any ingredients for it handy, I’ll wash my hair with regular shampoo. I wonder if the positive effects of HES keep on keepin’ on afterwards.

10 days later

They don’t.

Need to go back to Honey Egg Shampoo as quickly as possible!