What Has Been Making Your Natural Hair Journey EXPENSIVE? Part 2: Hair Tools

                                            
I’m pretty sure we’ve all watched videos of natural hair vloggers sharing their “Essential hair tools” which are definitely useful, but not essential, and might lead us to buy many hair tools at once, eager to try it out..

Only to be disappointed that it doesn’t work for your hair or frustrated and confused. You really don’t need those 20 items as your “essentials”. In this post I’m going to list the items in my opinion you’d need first to the least needed items.

MOST Needed to LEAST Needed Tools

Essentials: Detangler

You can easily start off with a comb, wide-tooth at that. Or as a free alternative use your own 10 fingers. What I do is finger detangle mostly, and if I want my hair to be thoroughly detangled I follow up with a wide-tooth comb. Using combs sparingly decreases breakage thus retaining more length and healthier looking hair.

Spray bottle

Yup, a spray bottle, for moisturizing your hair, which is just as important as a detangler. It’s very easy to find a reusable spray bottle within your household, otherwise you can find one at your local dollar store or at Sally’s. Their spray bottles have a nozzle for tightening/loosening if you want a mist, light mist, or stream.

Satin/silk bonnet, scarf, or pillowcase

Because if not, you’ll wake up to super dry tangled hair. It’s super important to use a satin or silk bonnet/cap, scarf, or pillowcase because the smooth fabric doesn’t dry out our kinks and curls like cotton does.

Plastic cap

For deep conditioning to trap heat into the hair and when you don’t want your hair wet while showering. You can buy a pack in bulk, no need for fancy plastic caps. You can find one at your local dollar store, beauty supply, or of course Amazon.

Recommended but not essential:

Brush: Great for smoothing hair, a boar bristle brush is recommended.

Butterfly clips/Duckbill clips: Great for sectioning and using a duckbill clip for sub-sections and pin curls. You can section without any tools by simply doing a bantu knot though.

Bobby pins + Scrunchies: So these are not essential but very close to it. You’d want a lot of quality bobby pins so they don’t snag at your hair. I have a 300-pack for $7 from Sally’s and they’ve been great so far. Scrunchies for of course putting up, and using the banding method to stretch. and try to get the ones without rubber bands inside, like Goody bands. If you want to know how to “band” your hair, Curly Nikki has an article that tells ways of stretching:

Banding

This method is great for stretching the hair without straightening it since it’s simple to do and doesn’t involve heat of any kind. All you will need are some small seamless hair bands.

1. Start off by separating a small section of your hair and loosely securing the rest of your hair so that it does not get in the way.
2. Then take your first hair band and secure it at the base of your hair.
3. Take the next one and secure it around the same section about an inch above the first hair band.
4. Continue to do this all the way to the end or leave about  2 inches of hair at the end to preserve the curl pattern if you are trying to stretch a wash and go or braid/twist-out.

It’s important to note that if you’re using this method to dry your hair or stretch it for a style like twists, then you should detangle first to remove any knots and ensure that the hair gets as stretched as it can. However, if you are using this method to stretch a wash and go or other style, then do not detangle before hand and try to do very little to manipulate the hair in order to maintain your curl pattern. Lastly, remember that the closer together the hair bands the more stretched the hair will be. Click here to read the full article

Rattail comb: Great for neat parting, and making comb coils (is that what it’s called?). I don’t have one but use the back of a paintbrush instead, works just as well.

Scarf/accessories: For those bad hair days or extreme weather cases, it’s great to have a decent amount of stylish scarves and/or beanies, but be sure to wear your satin/silk cap under a beanie so your hair doesn’t get dried out. Plus who doesn’t love a way to spice up your hair? I definitely recommend to invest in quality accessories. Like bobby pins, they can snag your hair and cause damage as well.

Upgrades

So these are the least needed and really in my opinion an upgrade to your hair care, and the most expensive. Funny how the most needed are the least expensive.. see? Natural hair isn’t as expensive as it’s dubbed to be. 🙂

Curling Tool: These include perm rods, flexi rods, curlformers, roller sets, etc. There are other ways to make tool-less curls like bantu knot-outs and 3-strand twists. But as said these are upgrades and can give you each different curls.

Blow dryer/flat iron: You might already have this, but it’s still an upgrade. You can make a heat-less blowout but there’s no way to get your hair straight like a flat iron. Be sure to invest in a quality flat iron because you don’t want to mess with heat and heat damage is permanent.

Hooded dryer: You might want to get a hooded dryer to dry your hair faster and more gently than a blow dryer. Really useful if you want to make and set a style in one day.

 NOTE: I love Naturalme4c! ^^

Processing cap: These are caps to keep even more heat into your hair. You could just use a beanie or T-shirt/towel but if you want to get fancy and such (and there’s no problem with that, I’m just showing you inexpensive options :)] then it’s nice to have a cap specifically for deep conditioning (DC) treatments.

FINAL THOUGHTS: These are again, in my opinion what would be needed most to least, to help fellow naturals save money on their hair care, making it less stressful. This is the end of my little series, and hope the 2 parts will help you in you natural hair journey. Please feel free to share your thoughts, do you think the list was well-put? Would you add or change it? And what tools do you use? Thanks for reading and be sure to share to other kinky-coily-curly girls in need of saving money! I will try to make new posts everyday, or every other day at least so stay tuned! ^.^

~Naturacurls♥

DISCLAIMER: ALL SOURCES ARE FOUND BY CLICKING THE PHOTO. I DO NOT OWN ANY PHOTOGRAPHY OR CONTENT OTHER THAN MY OWN WRITING.