How I removed / combed out my dreads!

Here’s the deal…I combed out my locs and it took a LONG A** time!  I started the take down process on January 6^th and completed it on February 24^th.  I managed to do this with the help of my husband…and amazingly so, he decided to not divorce me.  Yeah, this may sound crazy, but it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes to comb out ONE loc! No typos…1 hour for ONE LOC!

So how did I do this and still manage to stay married?  Well..can’t really discuss how I managed to stay married (this is a PG rated site) but I can tell you how we combed out my locs:

Let me first start by saying it takes a whole lot of PATIENCE! PATIENCE! PATIENCE! The take down process is really long and tedious.

1. Wash hair with a detangling / moisturizing shampoo
2. Soak locs with a mixture of olive oil and conditioner (preferably a cheap condition, you will use ALOT)
3. Begin picking out the loc – LITERALLY
4. Have a spray bottle of water and cheap conditioner available, each time the loc gets difficult or dry, SPRAY, SPRAY, SPRAY!
5. Day one complete, now repeat steps 1 to 4 tomorrow…

That’s IT!  OK – Not really.  Have you heard the saying “patience is a virtue”? – If you have combed out your locs then you and you alone are virtuous.

Just as an FYI –

My locs were about 2 feet long, and I had about 120 locs

I used some dental tool, a rat tail comb, and a fine tooth comb to pick/comb out my locs

I shed one plastic shopping bag of hair – that’s not bad when you think about it – I haven’t combed my hair in almost 5 years, guess one bag isn’t that bad!

Tips / Challenges:

1. Styling your hair while combing out locs can be tough; if you can get away with it, wrap your hair for the entire process
2. Once you comb a loc out, be sure to condition the hair and braid it, so it doesn’t get caught in your locs
3. Pace yourself – 1 to 4 locs per day
4. If you decide to do this, believe in God, Jah, Buddha, something…because you will need strength!

Oh, for those of you who are interested…this was my hair after I combed out my locs.