My youngest recently turned 1 and I’ve been weepy and nostalgic over pictures from his newborn stage lately. Last week while looking at the pictures we took while in the hospital, Curly Girl blog post inspiration struck. As much as I like to blog about anything under the sun, the majority of readers that come to my site spend the most time on hair posts! Scrunching is a super simple method but pictures always motivate me so I just wanted to share what a difference a styling technique can make with images. Shameless no make up hospital photo because those three little boys melt my heart! This pictures show a rare time that I left my hair down to dry even though I had not made any effort with it. Usually if I don’t plan to use product or style my hair at al, it goes up in a bun. If I do plan to spend time on it then I’d wear it down and no ruin a wash day with a bun. As you can see, my naturally wavy hair is essentially straight here. Even though for years when people asked me what I did to get my hair to be curly I would respond “this is just how it dries.” What I really meant was that I didn’t use a curling iron or crimper or something. It’s not entirely true that it “just dries” wavy/curly…I help it along! I almost take for granted that I scrunch my hair. I scrunch in product and I scrunch out water. I scrunch to encourage clumps of hair to spring up. This action of starting at the bottom of your wet hair and picking it up towards the root of your hand and making a fist either with your hand (or a microfiber towel or t shirt), really makes all the difference. Getting lax with it is easy to do. I’ve always scrunched a little bit, but after seeing this photo of zero scrunching I decided to experiment and spend an extra 10 minutes on it compared to my usual 2-3 minutes. Here are my results: As you can see, these is a totally different head of hair than my initial photo. Scrunching really encourages your curl pattern and helps fight against the weight of your hair and gravity. It also cuts down on dry time! I have been scrunching for as long as busy mornings allow these days, but I really think a full 10 minutes is worth it. If you are new to the Curly Girl Method, its really easy to get bogged down in complicated techniques, terms, product reviews, etc. I spent countless bad hair day in my first few weeks trying out things I had never heard of like: “raking” “rake and shake” “praying hands” “finger coiling” “plopping” There was so much to learn and experiment with, but I think most “curly girls” have always known about scrunching. So here is just a little reminder that the simple scrunch is powerful– don’t neglect it. Note – separate but related is the act of scrunching out the crunch which is still my very favorite thing I learned from the Curly Girl community. What’s your favorite curly girl technique? You may also like: