I’ll be honest. I’d never tried a cleansing conditioner despite their popularity in the last several year. A major concern was that it wouldn’t adequately clean my hair and that I’d end up with a greasy mane instead of soft and touchable. So on a whim I picked up this trial size packet of Renpure Solutions’ Vanilla Mint Cleansing Conditioner and decided to see if skipping shampoo could possibly be as good as people say.

I have normal to dry hair that breaks easily and is sensitive to harsh products, including most shampoos. I strictly use sulfate, paraben, and phthalate free products on my hair and this was free of all three as well as dyes making it extra gentle. It is however packed full of nourishing ingredients such as coconut oil, keratin, and shea oil. It smells amazing! I was also very happy that it doesn’t test on animals and the packaging itself is recyclable. It’s also safe for color treated hair so I chose to use it following my most recent hair dye experiment (read about it here).

The application process was pretty simple, more or less like a deep conditioning treatment. You simply apply a generous amount to all of your hair and leave in for 3-5 minutes. I applied it to my hair and went about the rest of my usual shower-time routine and it actually shortened the time I was in the shower considerably.

Day 1- After showering my hair definitely felt just as clean as if I’d just finished using a traditional shampoo and conditioner. When it dried it also looked just as clean. On the downside, as I typically use volumizing shampoos, my hair seemed a little limp and lifeless. But not bad at any way. It didn’t strip any color from my hair, which was impressive because semi-permanent dyes seem to have a tendency to fade even with just water. My hair was easy to brush through and felt so soft!

Day 2- The next morning, roughly 24 hours post shower, my hair still looked pretty decent. It wasn’t quite as “clean” as my hair typically looked 24 hours after using my normal shampoo, but it was decent enough to leave the house as it was without dry shampoo. Later in the day I did add a little dry shampoo before going to hang out with friends. My hair was still incredibly soft but not yet greasy and was very manageable.

Day 3- The third day was not good. I can usually go three days without shampooing my hair with my normal products, but not so much with this. My hair overnight had turned into a grease ball. Now, in a pinch it could have been easily fixed with a bit more dry shampoo, but I opted for just hoping in the shower and finishing off the packet of cleansing conditioner.

Overall I was really impressed. Not quite impressed enough to ditch my shampoo completely, but this might be sneaking it’s way into my winter staples. It’s not quite what I’d want for summer, as I don’t think it’ll work quite as well when it gets hotter around here. But I think for that certain part of the winter when my hair turns into a dry, static mess, this will be the perfect fix. I was also pretty impressed by the fact that I was actually able to get two full, very generous, applications out of one packet. I have rather long hair, about to the middle of my back, although it is on the thinner side, but typically trial sized packets of a similar size usually get me only 1 use.

If you’re looking for a cleansing conditioner I’d definitely recommend checking this one out for yourself!