Hair cutting at home

When I was in high school and college, I changed my hair weekly.  I cut, coloured, permed and eventually shaved my hair gleefully.  I'm very much interested in showing my individuality clearly on the outside, and purple hair was part of that for a long time.  The last time I died my hair with anything permanent was August of 2008.  I got chunks of blonde and red put in for an event I attended.  For  a while after that I was dying over it with semi-permanent raspberry colouring.  Very pretty.  Then I got pregnant.  I stopped dying my hair and only had it cut once or twice during the pregnancy because I didn't want to even be in a salon while V was gestating.  Now I have an infant daughter, limited funds and absolutely no time to go to a salon.  And a head of half died hair with split ends that is shedding like crazy now that I'm three months post-partum.  Basically, my hair has been making me sad.

So how to fix it?  Going to a salon right now is definitely not an option.  A full head of colour is not an option because I'm breast feeding.  But if I feel those split ends again, I'm going to use my new razor to shave it all.  I decided I just had to reclaim the experimental spirit I had in college, grab the scissors and take my mane into my own hands.  The difference between my hair in college and my hair now is, it's long(ish) now.  In college if I screwed up, in a few weeks, months at the most, it would be all grown out and fixed.  Now my hair has been below my shoulders for a while and I'm a bit attached to the length, so I would rather not screw up a whole lot.

I did some research online and found some articles on cutting layers into your own hair.  I have very thin, fine, shedding like crazy hair and long layers add a tiny amount of fullness and texture to what is otherwise not that impressive.  Eventually I decided to combine the methods I read about and go for a fairly conservative attempt at trimming my hair just enough so I wouldn't obsess quite so much.

I already have hair cutting scissors from all my previous adventures in hair cutting.  And I needed to shower and give V a bath anyway, so washing and conditioning my hair was on the menu for today anyway.  What I ended up doing was brushing my wet hair up into a tight ponytail on the top of my head and carefully cutting off about two inches of the end of the pony tail, which was held straight up from my head.  Then I took my hair down, bent over and brushed it all forward and down (head pointing toward the floor) and trimmed straight across.  The results aren't that much different from what I had, but some of the ends are neater and I did not completely screw up my hair. I might have to trim strays over the next few days and eventually I have to do something with the colour, but right now, I think I can rest a little easier.

This is the completely un-styled, air dried,  result of my home hair cut.  You can see that there are some tapered layers in there.  The front is so much shorter because I've been growing out poorly thought out bangs for a year and a half.

So how is cutting hair at home eco-frugal?  No gas spent getting to the salon.  No resources spent on the tools for the hair cut.  No money spent at all.  And hair clippings can be put in the compost or given to the birds for nesting material.