DIY Hair Mask!

My hair... it's a love/hate relationship. I hate it long, I hate it short, I hate how thick it is, I hate that it cannot decide if it's curly or straight, and I hate that it's in my way all the time.

But I love it. It's naturally blonde, thick, and generally enviable. I keep it long partially because I'm too lazy to get it cut more than once every six months, and also because it's easiest to put in a bun when it's long, and a bun is how I keep it out of my way.

Lately my hair has been a bit frizzy (thank you, weird springtime 90% humidity) and generally not up to snuff. So, since I can spot an attack of insomnia that meant I wasn't going to go to sleep until at least 2 a.m., I decided to do a homemade hair mask. Full disclosure, I don't recommend starting this process after 10 p.m. It was the first of many mistakes I made on that fateful night.

An Instagram picture of me having pretty hair.

Step One: Google it.

Because I'm generally unprepared for most things, I wasn't surprised that I didn't have what almost all hair masks call for- honey and avocado. After a weird amount of research, I decided I wanted to combine the effects of a few different masks, and make one with banana and mayo, mostly because I owned them both.

Step Two: Brush your hair well

Somewhere I gleaned that you should usually do masks on dry hair, and to ensure even coverage and general good grooming, you should make sure your hair is free of knots and tangles. My hair is constantly a rats nest, so this took me a bit, and resulted in a shocking amount of hair in my brush.

Note hubs' very fancy old speakers 

Step Three: Make your mask

I mushed up my almost-rotten banana, then added about half a cup of mayo (and yeah, it's light mayo, but that's all I eat on the few occasions I use mayo). After much mushing, I wasn't confident I had enough goop, so I added an egg since I read that it was also good for hair. This was one of many questionable decisions I made.

Banananananana

Stop trying to be modern, mayo packaging. It's awkward for everyone.

Looking back, using a yellow bowl wasn't good in terms of pictures. You guys still love me, right?

Step Four: Apply it

First, for the love of all that is good, take your shirt off. Even I could tell that this was going to be a mess. I sectioned off my hair into random, seemingly manageable chunks, but if your hair is thin, you could probably get it all in one go.

Seemingly manageable?

goop

I just kinda grabbed some goo and slopped it on. This was kinda messy, but I was alone and it was late, so I didn't really care that much. It'd be way easier to do with a friend, because the back of your head is damn near impossible to see.

Approximately a thousand years later, my whole head was covered in a weird, slightly chunky goo that smelled like I'd tried to make egg salad with banana. I kinda sculpted it into a bun on the top of my head, secured it with an elastic, and called it a day.

Time to Internet!

Fun fact: This hair mask will attract cats. You've been warned.

Step Four: Wait

I was originally going to wait for thirty minutes, but I instead spent an hour and a half on Buzzfeed.com and sooooo yeah. I'm not sure if the cat gif's helped with the hair mask. I'd still highly recommend them during the process.

Step Five: Rinse, rinse, rinse, lather, rinse, lather, rinse, lather, rinse

This was when I first realized the fatal flaw I made in step three. Somehow, I failed to realize that teeny tiny chunks of banana basically turn into super glue once they touch your hair.

Honestly, it felt like I was using all of Niagra Falls just to get this out of my hair, and for the first 10 minutes I had to use barely warm water, since I didn't want to cook the egg in the mask before I had a chance to get rid of it. Wasn't this supposed to be a luxury? It felt way more like work.

Step Six: Get out of the shower, begin to comb hair, and get back into shower

Or do what I did and just do that twice. Why, you ask? Because I kept finding freaking tiny little pieces of banana. At this point, I was actually tired, it was getting a bit too close to 1 a.m. to still be doing this, so I dried my hair, put my PJ's on, put a towel on my pillow to prevent any excess banana in my bed, and fell asleep.

Bear Grylls needs mucho post-shower love.

Step Seven: Brush your hair again once it's dry

Very early morning hair. So pretty, yet full of bananas.

Step Eight: Take a moment to realize just how much tiny old pieces of banana look like boogers, then gag that all these little not-boogers are in your lap

Step Nine: Wash your hair again

Step Ten: Go to the store and buy some deep conditioner because you quit

Yup. Thing is, had I put the whole mixture in the blender instead of doing it by hand, this whole process could've been much easier. But cleaning the blender is a huge pain in the butt, and I didn't really make enough of it to make the elaborate process seem worth it. Again, if you do this with a few friends, it'd be easier to blend up a big batch of it. Alone, not so much.

End result was that my hair was essentially the same as before, only slightly drier from all the shampooings, and filled with small pieces of decomposing organic matter.

I'll do a review of the hair mask I did buy.

You guys are more than welcome to tell me your at-home beauty tips, and I'll try them and even follow the directions. Pinky swear.