The joys of cold water! Washing hair outside/in cold water

[Tinyponies]

Cold water lovers! Share your experiences and tips for enjoying washing hair in cold water here! Whether for health, leisure or necessity.

I’ve been a cold water enthusiast for some years now, mostly enjoying river swimming and a cold shower when I’ve access to a sauna/steam room.

Last summer I moved to a place where the only water source is a deep groundwater spring about 100m downhill from the house. So all of my hair washing has been happening there, and I absolutely adore it.

My initial learnings on getting a good wash include:

For me, finding a routine where I wash least often has helped my hair and my conscience. This suits my character and life ethos as well as my scalp. I’m washing around once every 20 days with conditioner only and wearing head coverings every day to keep the dust etc out as my life (renovating) is very dusty right now.

Use a plant based biodegradable product as far as possible if washing out in the nature.

Take your time and be gentle, in my case with conditioner only, I’m letting the product have ample time to soften and emulsify sebum, dead skin etc while gently massaging scalp. Cold water washing is a slower affair than hot.

Use a bucket rather than putting head directly in the stream of water - this makes for less accidents involving moss and sticks, in my case. I use a medium sized plexi bucket that’s really light to carry.

Always empty rinse bucket onto the land away from the watercourse where it will have the chance to be filtered / digested.

Scrape and squeeze off as much product as possible BEFORE rinsing, in my case my conditioner will squeeze off damp hair in much the same condition that it went on, I can then put this on a plate to take home or bury. There is then *loads* less product being released into the rinse water.

Collect shed hairs and take them home; I’ve no references for this but gut feeling says to do this to protect tiny limbs from becoming entangled.

Leave no trace at the well/spring. Goes without saying.

Hope this helps someone, maybe you have more to add? I also bathe in cold water every day (bucket and flannel - no soap - and swim when possible). Now that I’m getting used to the feeling of washing in cold water I much prefer it to warm, the fresh and stimulating feeling is quite lovely.

[Ylva]

Thank you for the great tips!

I haven't been able to wash my hair in natural water yet but I hope to start doing it next summer (as in 2021). My skin loves the fresh mountain water and my hair loves my mother's well water so I think it would do well up in the mountains as well.

A cold shower after sitting in the sauna is one of my favourite sensations in the world.

[Tinyponies]

Thank you for the great tips!

I haven't been able to wash my hair in natural water yet but I hope to start doing it next summer (as in 2021). My skin loves the fresh mountain water and my hair loves my mother's well water so I think it would do well up in the mountains as well.

A cold shower after sitting in the sauna is one of my favourite sensations in the world.
You’re very welcome! Oh I miss a good sauna. Hoping to build one near the spring but might be next year :) the cold water shower is just divine :love:

[Tinyponies]

Today has been such lovely weather here, so here’s a pic of my wash day set-up :flower:

https://i.imgur.com/rWQQbMh.jpg

[Ylva]

I finally got to give this a try! I spent a couple of days at my brother's cabin in the archipelago. I swam in the sea and decided to wash my hair afterwards using his outdoor hose. It was surprisingly pleasant despite the water being cold, at least it wasn't ice cold and the temperature was otherwise very pleasant. The only negative were the mosquitos who find me EXTREMELY attractive; I'm covered in bites! :taz:

It would've been much less of a bother to just condition once as opposed to WCC + leave-in, but I did omit my second leave in which is an oil and just went with the cream. Also, it took a while for my hair to settle in its place after flipping it around. Fortunately, there weren't any tangles.

Because of the unplanned swimming, I ended up washing my hair twice in one day, which was a bit stupid, but before that, I'd gone almost three days without washing it so by that logic, it was fine. :lol:

[Tinyponies]

Gah sorry to hear that you got bitten to bits! It sounds like things worked out ok though considering.

Here we are regularly getting midges and occasionally these big bitey flies which I hope aren’t horseflies. Gotta be quick and get my top back on arrrghhh and then pick the bugs out of my conditioner lol

[JotPurpleIris]

I use cold water on my hair all year round. Initially to preserve veggie dye in my hair - less dye loss and longer lasting colour. But I've always hated hot baths and showers any way. I do prefer cold showers no matter what, and always do my hair upside down and separate no matter what. So it makes sense I would prefer using cold water on my head too really. The whole process for me is much more enjoyable with cold water.

No outside tap at mine. Just my nan's, but I look after her when I'm there (and my mule), so no time to wash my own hair, just my nan's. I have before though and I liked it a lot.

I use coconut conditioner to wash my hair, and I clarify with coconut shampoo when needed.

[Feral_]

Hey! This was so interesting and inspiring to read. As you know I do WO and use warm water to wash mine, so I was just thinking how cold water wouldn’t dissolve the hair’s sebum / oil, but then realise the conditioner will do that job, hence the careful washing. Makes sense! I really admire your hardiness - I honestly don’t think I could do that in the winter, I’m too soft lol.

The nearest I get to outdoor hair washing is an external shower set up to clean the dogs off. Even that is an electric h&c one! Perhaps I could toughen myself up to your standard by using it :lol:

I always rinse my hair in cold - keeping my bod out of the shower flow - and the other day when the weather was so humid my shower wasn’t cold enough even on the lowest setting, so I was able to stand under it (rare!). Apparently a guy who was on that SAS Who Dares Wins programme said after his experiences he now showers in cold water every morning and enjoys it. I bet your skin is better for no products to dry it out too, and a slough with a flannel is certainly enough to get clean.

I loved the bit about taking hair home so tiny limbs don’t get entangled - have visions of insects needing rescuing lol. Hair does compost well though as like fur it is rich in nitrogen.

Amazing pic of your tresses too :)

[shelomit]

I grew up in the boonies; my parents' ranch didn't have running water to the house until after I had moved away. In the summer we bathed outside and in the winter had to haul water up the hill, heat it on the stove, and spot-bathe (no tub to put it in, either). I can't claim to miss the experience, but I can at least describe how it was:

Day by day, we just spot-washed at a basin inside the house. Just water, no soap. You'd catch your face and hands and pits and privates in the morning, and just hang the rest. We were so scant on water that we didn't usually get to wash in fresh water, but leftover water from the kitchen that something else had been boiled in or washed in or something. I remember once washing my hands, going outside, and immediately watching them go all white and powdery. . . we had potato water that day, and as soon as I got to the dryer air outside all the starch sort of solidified on my hands. I was the only person who got to really clean my hands regularly, since I was in charge of the dairying from the time I was about seven or eight. Before I went out to milk, I would rinse my hands in vinegar or iodine. We were scarce on both so I was the only person who got to use them.

Every couple of weeks you got to have "a bath." For this we kept a bucket, a bowl, soap, and rags down by the windmill. You'd strip down while the bucket was filling up with water, use the rags and soap to soap yourself up, and rinse it off bit by bit by splashing water from the bowl. With what the wind and sun are like here, plus the low humidity, you'd be dry in an instant. This place is in high desert, but on the few times of the year that we actually got rain everybody would drop what they were doing, run down to the windmill where the soap was, and start stripping off their clothes and washing. It was the only time you could really get all of yourself clean at once, except for your feet. You'd be standing in the sand, of course, which would be getting wet and wanting to cling to your feet, so it wasn't any use trying to clean them. I don't think we ever washed our feet. And being outdoors, wish dustdevils so frequent and sand always blowing around, you felt dusty and gritty before you could even get your clothes back on.

Same during the winter indoors, except since we didn't own a tub or anything so large you had to stand in the mudroom up top of a pile of old sheets to absorb whatever water dripped, even though there was no heating in that room. Deep in winter, you could only get a little part of yourself wet at one time and then dry off immediately, or the water would freeze right on you. We would carry water from the windmill up the hill in a spackleware thing that I think was probably supposed to be a lobster pot and then chuck it on the kitchen stove to get warm. I remember once slipping and falling down the hill once I'd almost gotten up it; the water spilled all over me, and by the time I got to the bottom of the hill all my clothes had frozen stiff : P Perhaps you-all live in warmer places, but there I can't imagine trying to use cold water to bathe in during the winter being a recipe for anything except hypothermia. At some point my dad tried cutting an old chemical drum open to use as a kind of standing tub, but by that point even I was too big for that to really be of use.

We washed our heads very rarely, maybe a few times a year--NEVER when it was cold. I remember more often going outside on windy days (which is almost every day in southwestern Kansas, lol) combing my hair through with wheat or sorghum grit, sort of scrubbing it around on my head, then letting the dust blow away. If the sorghum wasn't really well winnowed, the bits of husk would cut up your scalp bloody. I did most of the cooking, and the wheat grit I saved up every time I sifted flour. The sorghum grit, though, must have been cracked specifically for that purpose, as we didn't ordinarily eat sorghum other than whole. There was a field a few miles away where the owner often planted sorghum, so we would go through in the fall after harvest and pick up all the stalks that the combine wheels had run over and save the grain from that.

When we did wash our heads with water, it was just with the same homemade soap as everything else. We caught up ashes from the heat-stove in the basement, drove water through it, and made soap from that. A friend of ours a few counties away from us who raised hogs would trade us enough lard to make soap with over winter if my dad would help him do his taxes in the spring. My mother always insisted that I wash my head upside down in a bucket, which made my hair tangle unimaginably. I would have to kneel on the ground with my face as far down in the bucket as I could get; she would pour water from another bucket over the nape of my neck and run her fingers through my hair to try and get it wet, then run the soap against my head and try to rinse it out the same way. Again, we were so stingy with water that you never really got the soap out. I recall the hair close to my scalp standing up stiff afterwards from the leftover soap. You couldn't really do that by yourself without another person to help you, though I suppose if you had some kind of sudsing soap instead of lye soap that doesn't want to dilute it ought to have been easier. I also recall that there would be this amazingly pervasive smell of woodsmoke when we washed our heads. We were around woodsmoke all the time, so I suppose that all kind of hovered around in your hair until you finally got it wet.

It was much more common to wash the "tail" of the hair without washing your head, which typically just meant dipping it in some water that you'd gotten hold of somehow and swishing it around. Sometimes I would put concoctions of eggs, tallow, etc. on my hair, wrap it up in oil cloth, and rinse it out a while after. My dad often put tallow on his hair and beard, though I don't believe he rinsed it out. I told a story recently here--in a thread about old wives' stories, or something on that notion--about washing your hair in whey to make it soft. I sort of thought I had been told that by the girl that was my best friend growing up, but that we hadn't actually tried it. More recently a memory has come back of Sally and I both sitting with the tails of our hair in that same spackleware pot and just about cracking our heads together. That pot was also the one I used for making cheese, so we may well have had whey in it--I can't say for certain.

I typically spent a good part of the summer with my maternal grandparents in southwestern Missouri, where they had proper running water and, at one point, an indoor tub. Coming back, the thing that I missed most was actually feeling clean for a change. That was where and when we put henna on our hair--probably in part because of my grandmother being there and the aunties visiting, but also partly because of the availability of water. The place they have lived most recently there is a creek cutting through the acreage where we soak our heads for awhile before trying to really get the henna out. I can't imagine trying to rinse out henna with as little water as we had to use back on the ranch!

[Feral_]

Wow Shelomit your account is fascinating, thanks for sharing it. I’m not surprised you don’t miss that experience! Just shows what things were classed as important when you’re living frugally. Some folk are ‘green’ by default. To be honest I find that humbling with all the products being used today in their quest for perfect hair.

[Tinyponies]

JotPurpleIris, hey! Great to meet another person who loves washing in cold water.

Feral_ so glad to read that you enjoyed my sharings here. Still making minor refinements so I’ll update at some point. Thanks for the compliment :)

shelomit thank you so much for sharing your memories here. I was absorbed reading them. That level of frugality with water is astounding. I never thought of reusing water used to boil vegetables and added the carrot water to my washing up bucket tonight, thanks :)

We are quite blessed here as the water comes from deep in the ground at a constant temperature all year round, on a frosty morning in winter it can be seen steaming. Rain water collected in a butt is much colder in low temps. This winter here in Wales was our first and it was relatively mild, when its cold out I’ll wash my body using cold rain water in a bucket, but in a warm room thankyouverymuch :lol:

[MusicalSpoons]

This thread is so interesting but I hadn't commented because cold water is definitely not for me (body says a big fat Definite Nope). But I just had to say shelomit thank you *so* much for sharing your experiences - amazing, and fascinating to read. I'm not surprised you don't miss it though!

Tinyponies oh wow, your water source sounds fabulous. I do love Welsh water - the only place where a cup of tea didn't develop scum on the top was Henrydd, near Conwy. Ynyslas/Borth is a close second with the merest hint of scum after leaving tea to stew for, erm, quite a long time *cough*20mins+*cough* We use our vegetable water for making gravy with the dinner, but come to think of it we could at least use the rest to water other plants :hmm:

Anyway, just popped up mainly to say thanks to shelomit so I'm gonna slink back off now :wink:

[Ylva]

Thank you for sharing that, shelomit! Very interesting indeed.

I definitely wouldn't wash my hair or my body outdoors in the winter, either. :D But now that it's the summer and we're having a heatwave, it was nice to experience that, too.

[shelomit]

JotPurpleIris, hey! Great to meet another person who loves washing in cold water.

shelomit thank you so much for sharing your memories here. I was absorbed reading them. That level of frugality with water is astounding. I never thought of reusing water used to boil vegetables and added the carrot water to my washing up bucket tonight, thanks :)


But I just had to say shelomit thank you *so* much for sharing your experiences - amazing, and fascinating to read. I'm not surprised you don't miss it though!


Thank you for sharing that, shelomit! Very interesting indeed.

Sure thing, guys! (And Feral, too. . . I didn't know how to quote you since your comment was on the previous page.) I do think that I ought to point out that our concern about water was the result of necessity, from living as subsistence farmers in the desert. In a bad year we might not get more than two or three inches of rain, and at one point there was less than ten feet of water left in the aquifer underneath us. The small water supply we had went first to the livestock, second to the crops, and finally to the people. I certainly wouldn't recommend that to anybody who lives in a wetter place. The extreme water restrictions have had some not-so-fun effects on my health, both in childhood and in later years.

[Tinyponies]

The last couple of my washes have been up by the house, using rain water from a butt that collects it from the shed roof.

I feel sure that the water is making significant difference to how my hair feels, and giving me more success with my co washing.

My hair is much softer and has more of a lustre about it, but it may also be a contributor to me having more tangly hair when flipping back the right way up. There are other things that could be adding to this though.

There are currently a lot of biting summer bugs (midges, mosquitoes, horseflies) down by the spring which were starting to get on my nerves, and up here the rain water is a lot warmer than the spring water. In winter, the spring water will be warmer than the rain water, as it maintains constant temp (10-11C) year round.

[sipnsun]

Oh how reading this makes me miss living in the country! Up until 3.5 years ago, we had a horse farm with acreage. I worked outside all day teaching lessons and training horses and asked my husband to install an outdoor shower for me. It was AMAZING! After being so hot, sweaty and dirty from cleaning stalls and riding all day it was a relief to stand under that cold well water stream. I did have a hot water tank but rarely used it unless it was cold outside. Now we live on a golf course with neighbors all around so no outdoor shower unfortunately. Hopefully one day we'll make it back to the country...

[sipnsun]

Wow shelomit, thank you for sharing your story! You should write a memoir of your childhood, it's so interesting!

[Hellebore]

I just started getting into cold water plunges for health-related reasons. It never occurred to me that I could wash my hair outside until I came across this post!

We have a spigot outside that doesn’t serve much purpose (I use it to give the dogs water when they’re playing outside) and now I’m thinking I might construct an outdoor shower using that spigot for cold water hair-washing.

[Tinyponies]

sipnsun your old outdoor shower sounds divine. :heart: hope you moved away for positive reasons, that’s a lot to miss.

Hellebore (love your username, and hellebores), great idea!

Hopefully we will get around to constructing an outdoor shower too. I can’t wait!

[shelomit]

Wow shelomit, thank you for sharing your story! You should write a memoir of your childhood, it's so interesting!

Thank you! We often lived in great privation, but from my current perspective I'm grateful for a lot of the experiences I had growing up in the backcountry.

[Dark40]

Oh, I love rinsing my hair in cold water! Does that count? I remember when I went swimming, and as I came from the pool I rinsed all of the chlorine out with cold water. Both my hair and skin loved it!

[knobbly]

Tinyponies, can I ask you what kind of conditioner you use for cowashing? Interesting that it works well in cold water (with your modifications.)

[Tinyponies]

Tinyponies, can I ask you what kind of conditioner you use for cowashing? Interesting that it works well in cold water (with your modifications.)

Hi there knobbly,

I’m using garnier hair food papaya. It appears to be working well so far.

I tried the bowl method that some lovely people here were recommending a while back, where you mix conditioner with a small amount of water then dunk your hair into it, but my conditioner wouldn’t “melt” into the water, which I take it was because of the temperature.

I seem to have no issues with smooshing it straight onto my wet (squeezed out) hair, or with rinsing it off.

Leaving the conditioner on for a few minutes is part of my routine, I tend to coil it up and hold it in a bun-shape against my head, in my warm hands. Usually in a squatting position which feels safe, and I can shut my eyes without falling over!

As far as I can understand, out of my two “hair foods” papaya and banana, the papaya one is likely to work better because it doesn’t contain shea butter (I may be wrong) which I imagine may have more issues with the cold. I’ve used the banana one successfully but not for more than one co-wash in a row.

Yesterday I swam in the sea! We saw dolphins in the distance. It was divine. But my hair stayed dry in its high bun. :)

current length - bcl

[knobbly]

Dolphins! Sounds so amazing.

Thanks for the info. I am having some tangling issues while washing and considering going back to cowashing.

[Tinyponies]

Dolphins! Sounds so amazing.

Thanks for the info. I am having some tangling issues while washing and considering going back to cowashing.
You’re welcome. Do you wash upside down? I’m currently working on figuring out some tangles when washing too.

[knobbly]

You’re welcome. Do you wash upside down? I’m currently working on figuring out some tangles when washing too.

Well haha, yes sort of? I have a whole post about it but it was suggested that going from standing up while washing to conditioning upside down, to rinsing right side up, was contributing to the tangles. So, last wash day I did the whole thing upside down and threw my back out. :thud: Now I'm marinating on doing the whole thing standing with my hair parted down the middle, even though I don't love the feeling of wet hair clinging to me in the shower, just from a sensory level. We'll see what I come up with next Sunday.

I just know that when I was CO there weren't so many steps, because my washing step didn't create a ton of tangles in the first place, so that is on the table as a way to make the whole process shorter. Plus when I am heavily pregnant I won't be able to bend over at all for lengthy periods, even if my back suddenly decides it loves me in that posture (it won't.)

If you want to take a look to see if you have any suggestions, or could benefit from any of the tangle advice given to me, the post is called "the crowdsourced routine troubleshooting thread" and it's on the front page or close to it in this forum. I haven't yet figured out how to link threads, sorry I can't give you a link!

[Tinyponies]

Hope your back feels better soon, knobbly.

I found and read through your thread. Thanks I had missed it! Some very good suggestions and ideas there, and I like the idea of having a go-to thread for those kinds of issues too.

I’ve just been and washed this morning with a few changes to my usual thing. Hopefully we’ll both hit on something that helps with my washday tangles soon!

Enjoy your pregnancy :heart:

[Tinyponies]

Full moon of Jan and Imbolc coming up, time for a wash. Last wash was Solstice, and have been really happy using combing and BBB.

Still enjoying CO washing, and delighted each time with how squeaky clean my hair feels afterwards, without feeling stripped. Today I used the hairfood papaya, but last time it was the macadamia one which was divine, it felt like it had a lot more oil content.

I washed up near the house, using collected rain water instead of going to the spring. The rain water is a lot colder! Ooohhh

I’ve tried a number of different things to reduce the tangling I was having each wash day. I wash in a bucket of cold water that is on the ground. The tangles were coming from (and there may be more):

- washing upside down and then tangling when going back right side up

- too enthusiastic scalp rubbing

- dunking lengths in water and letting them swish around (whilst enjoying how pretty that looks lol)

- same as above but then also dunking my head into the water in order to wet/rinse.

So some of the things I have settled on doing differently are:

- no more combing or brushing until mostly dry. I tried for ages to brush it down again after flipping right side up and felt like I was causing damage.

- before starting to wash, dividing (detangled) hair in half and bringing to the front. Holding it under my chin with lengths folded up in palm. Dunk top of head in water and give scalp a little rub with other hand. This is where I hung out with my head in the water. It gave me the feeling afterward of having been wild swimming.

- rubbing scalp under water, only making small movements in a line, not rubbing circles (I use fingertips). I think this is pretty well known but it wasn’t obvious to me just how careful I could be, so adding it here.

- when right way up, using a large cup (I used a pint glass today) to then pour water over head and length. This is my main way of rinsing.

- at end of wash, squeezing out each side whilst leaving them in one big clump, then gently shaking hair out and bunning high on my head and wrap with T-shirt. This I leave on for half an hour or so then switch to my microfibre bunny hat.

Best wishes to all!

current length: tbl

[Feral_]

Thanks for sharing that ‘Ponies, sounds like a good system. I concur with the rubbing in line and not circles, I do this with dry hair, far less tangles that way. Roll on summer for warmer hair rinsing!

[Tinyponies]

Thanks for sharing that ‘Ponies, sounds like a good system. I concur with the rubbing in line and not circles, I do this with dry hair, far less tangles that way. Roll on summer for warmer hair rinsing!

Yep summer washing will be lovely, also a return to river and hopefully lots of sea swimming too. Anything that gives that bodily reminder of the fact that we are little animals too.

I don’t mind the cold, I’ll happily wash outside in cold, or rain but not freezy cold, or when there’s a cold wind. For me there’s this nourishing, clear feeling of cold water and the action of skin adjusting to it. But really I’ve got to be outside while I do it.

So glad to have had this living experience where I had no alternative. We can now heat up a big “jam pan” of rain water on the fire each evening for a bucket bath next to the fire, which is just heavenly. But I’m definitely going to carry on hair washing outside in cold water.

[Eastbound&Down]

Nothing quite extreme, but I did recently start incorporating a cold water rinse to the end of my shower routine. I flip my head upside and keep my body out of the water so its just my head. My hair loves it, so I'll keep it up.

[Dark40]

Oh, I love the feeling of washing my hair in cold water! Or, taking a cold shower after a workout. I've always had some excellent experiences with washing my hair in cold water! I've always done it for health reasons. It does leave your hair looking for feeling a lot healthier rather than washing it in warm or hot water, and I think it's a good thing that cold water seals in the cuticle and closes them up. Especially, when you're rinsing out your conditioner.

[ArtOfNoot]

I'm not sure how my hair enjoys cold water, but I'm far too lazy to wait for water to warm up to dilute my AVC rinses and it's always refreshing!