If you are interested in this post, that means you are having a bad time! Headlice is one of the most persistent, disgusting, and embarassing problems you can have. And they don’t care at all if you’re rich or poor, dirty or clean, nice or mean. If you have skin and hair, they’re happy to move in. Yuck!
About a decade ago, there was a headlice outbreak in the local school disctrict. Even though we homeschool, we soon found out that it had gotten to us! At the time, all our boys kept their hair very short, so none of them got it. But there were six girls here with long hair, and each of us had bugs in our hair. Ugh! So we started a war against those tiny varmints that lasted for months, but in the end, we won. And we learned a few things in the process.
1) Prepare for War
This won’t be a one time battle. Take time to learn about lice so you know what you’re dealing with. Make time to work on getting rid of them for several weeks.
2) Get a Fine Tooth Comb and Lice Killer
There are commercially made lice killing kits with lice poison, fine toothed combs, and probably some protective gloves and a hair cover. That is one option for working on a lice problem.
There are also natural remedies that we found just as efficient and less scary than the commercial poison. The ingredients for the natural remedies were apple cider vinegar and coconut oil, or garlic, coconut oil, and tea tree oil.
3) Use the Lice Killer
-For a lice kit, follow the instructions with the kit.
-For the vinegar method, completely wet hair with apple cider vinegar and let air dry (to unglue nits). Thoroughly cover scalp and hair with coconut oil (suffocates lice). Cover hair for 3-5 hours, then wash out. Blow dry (the heat kills nits). (This was our prefered method. It was just as effective as store poison, but smelled better and was safer for our bodies.)
-For the garlic method, crush 2 cloves of garlic per head. Mix with coconut oil and a little tea tree oil and completely cover scalp and hair. Leave in for one hour and wash out. Blow dry.
4) Comb through Hair
Comb through hair slowly and carefully to remove lice and nits. Use your fine toothed comb to help you move just a small section of hair at a time. The goal is to see the base of every hair on that head so you can find and remove all the nits (lice eggs). They stick to the hairs and have to be pulled down the hair till they come off, one at a time. Have a sinkful or bucketful of water close by to put nits and bugs in, and rinse the comb frequently.
Repeat this step every day or two until you’ve done at least 3 clean combings in a row! It may be necessary to do a second poisoning or more.
5) Get Them Out of Your House
Do Lots of Laundry
Wash all bedding in a washer and dryer. Wash and rewash pillowcases often until bugs are gone. In extreme cases, get new pillows. Wash and dry bath towels and shirts/dresses/jackets after each use until lice are gone.
Soak Hair Accessories
Soak all hair accessories and brushes at least 2 hours to kill loose bugs. Put brushes away till lice are gone. Instead, use a plastic, wide tooth comb that you clean and dehair after each use. Any hair accessories used (till bugs are gone) should be set aside and resoaked after each use.
Couch pillows, Stuffed animals, etc.
Couch pillows, stuffed animals, and other fiberous items that are hard to wash should be set aside for at least 48 hours. Closing them in a plastic garbage bag in the sunshine will help to contain and kill lice. Consider getting new pillows and using furniture pesticide for a really bad outbreak.
Preventing Future Lice
There is no guarantee that you’ll never deal with healice again, but here are some things that can help:
- Coconut oil in your hair products
- Never sharing brushes or hair accessories
- Hair spray, mousse, etc. in your hair regularly
- Don’t share pillows, hats, etc.
Whenever life throws you an ugly battle, I hope you can face it with courage. Thanks for reading my post.
