Last wash day of this stretch...27 weeks post relaxer

Hiii everyone! Hope you are all doing well. I am really missing the sunshine and warm rays beating on my face. This "winter" must be the worst one that we have experienced in Kenya in a long time. Yes even the equator gets cold....

I have been looking forward to finally ending this stretch and seeing whether it was worthwhile. From the looks of things I have gained about 3 inches of new growth and up to 3.5 inches in certain areas of my hair. I am happy with that, and I am now nervous of how my ends will be looking after I texlax my hair this coming weekend.

To prep for the relaxer day I followed the same routine as before:
(1.) Detangled with Mane 'n Tail Detangler and coconut oil.
(2.) Applied ApHogee 2-minute Keratin Reconstructor and placed my hair under my hothead heating cap for about 20 minutes.
(3.) Hopped into the shower and shampoo'd my hair with Creme of Nature Sulphate-free Moisture & Shin Shampoo
(4.) Towel-dried my hair and deep conditioned overnight with a mix of the last few amounts of my Beautiful Textures deep conditioner + Neutrogena Hair Triple Moisture Hair Mask + Aussie moist 3-minute conditioner.
I am now 3 conditioners down and have only 5 conditioners remaining (including instant conditioner). YESSS

(5.) Rinsed my hair the next morning and t-shirt dried for about 30 minutes.
(6.) Applied ApHogee Greent Tea & Keratin Restructurizer to the ends of my hair and on one half I applied Pure Naturals Coconut Detangler & Leave-in Conditioner. I found a leave-in conditioner that I abandoned early on in my hair journey and decided to try it again: Cantu Shea Butter Leave-in Conditioning Cream.
I assessed each half of my hair at the end of the day and noticed that both halves were still well conditioned. Well all that means that the Cantu Leave-in Conditioner is actually a good product for my hair and maybe I judged it a bit too early.

Overall my hair feels healthy, but I am not too sure about my ends. That is the downside about transitioning to more textured hair, the straight hair looks awefully unhealthy even though it's not. However, not only do my straight ends look unhealthy, but they actually were.

I sat down and tried the search & destroy method. Boy is this a tedious task! It took me about 3 hours to complete the entire task! But it was worth it... I had soo many (and I mean MANY) split ends and single strand knots that I didn't notice before. 


I am definitely going to try to do a search and destroy every 2-3 months, because a blanket trim does not always deal with all the problem ends.

How do you manage split ends and single strand knots?