Show of hands: Does your natural hair take hours to dry? Do products slide off or clump up into balls of unattractive white gel? If so, you may be suffering from non-porous hair. Not to worry! With a few quick tips from CurlyNikki.com, you can help your strands easily absorb product so you can get stylin’ in no time.

First, do a porosity check. After cleaning your hair, grab a shed strand from your head, brush or comb, and drop it in a glass of water. If the strand takes forever to sink to the bottom, then you are a low-porosity natural. Though you can’t change the porosity of your hair, you can accept it and learn to work with it. Here’s how: