Hi, I’m Alyssa and I am the laziest person when it comes to doing my hair. Which is pretty ironic, since I’m the manager at QALI.
Don’t get me wrong, I love having my hair done and feel like my best self when my hair is curled with 15 types of texturizing sprays in it, but I would rather spend an extra 30 minutes sleeping in the morning than get up and do my hair. I wouldn’t say doing my hair is a priority in my life/getting ready routine but I always want my hair to look good. Dilemma.
I used to work in the film industry as a visual effects line producer which meant I was often working 14 hour days in a male-dominated, very casual work environment. My hair was in an (unwashed) top knot 5 days out of 6 and if I washed my hair and wore it down everyone thought I made some sort of drastic change overnight. It took some of my coworkers 6 month to notice I had blonde highlights. It was hard to feel motivated to do my hair when there wasn’t anyone to appreciate it, and when it really didn’t matter. I was at a desk or a dark screening room 90% of the time surrounded by the same people who didn’t care what I looked like.
I have a complicated relationship with my hair - I have a lot of thick, straight hair that I usually keep pretty long and when I take the time to style it I feel like I can take on the world. The downside to having lots of hair is the maintenance - washing and drying it takes foreeeever and when I let it grow out long (out of laziness) it feels heavy and lifeless and is hard to style. I was the worst with maintaining my colour and would often leave too many months in between refreshes and toners (what even is a toner?) and then I would be unhappy and frustrated with how my hair looked even though it was fully in my power to improve it.
I’m happy to say I’m on the road to recovery and have started gathering all the lazy girl hot tips to keep my hair under control with relatively minimum maintenance.
- Regular trims! When I started colouring my hair, my ends would get pretty crispy from the bleaching, blow drys and hot tool use. Alot of salons will offer a dry trim for around $30 and it’s definitely worth it to keep my ends healthy and looking taken care of. For the same amount of time and money as lunch at Tacofino (with a margarita) I can get a quick trim and feel like I have my life together a bit more. Since I have a lot of hair it feels great to have it thinned out as well, especially in the summer.
- Take home colour shampoo/conditioner. If you’re going to be paying any amount of money to colour your hair, you might as well spend a few extra dollars to get some take home products to keep it fresh in between salon visits which will ultimately save you money in the long run. For my dark hair and blonde balayage, a good purple shampoo is a game changer - it costs about $30 and lasts forever because I only use it once a week or so. There are so many customizable take home treatments now so no matter what you do to your hair, there’s a product that will help keep you feeling fresh without adding 10 steps to your showering routine.
- Blowout spray - game changer. I fully admit that I lived 26 years on this planet without knowing that you could put things on wet hair that would make it blowdry faster. The years of my life that could have been saved had I known this earlier…. I realized one of the biggest problems I had with my hair was how it looked after it was blow dried - it would get very straight and slippery and couldn’t be styled afterwards because it would all just fall out. Enter the blowout spray - it speeds up my drying time and leaves my hair with some nice texture and grit so I can add waves or curls that last. This is probably the single biggest revelation I’ve had on my journey to fly hair - I kind of look forward to washing my hair now because with a little bit of effort I’m actually happy with how my hair looks after I dry it.
xo Alyssa
