How Much Product is Too Much?

Twist out fro, little product. Umm, excuse the bathroom stalls @work. The best lighting, I swear.

Is less more when it comes to products?

I'm starting to think so. I'm super heavy handed. If product directions say use a quarter-sized dollop, I'll double that. I figure more is better, no? But that doesn't always work. Less is always more when it comes to the amount of money you save on products. Half the time, I feel as if my hair is weighed down with product.

After years of looking at hair charts, I've yet to figure out my hair. I've only seen 2 or 3 people with the kind of curls that I have -- tight corkscrew curls like the inside of a ballpoint pin. I don't think my hair is fine, it's thick and pretty dense. Yet, my hair presses straight as a pin with a good flat iron or press.

And shrinkage is a straight beast:Water is my frienemy. It moisturizes like no other, but my hair shrinks from APL when straightened to neck length when unstraightened if I add the teeniest bit of water.

My hair, even natural, shrinks up in styles like twist outs whenever there's a touch of rain, fog or humidity. For me moisture in the hair = hella shrinkage. So much so that I usually wear an updo when the weather is icky; I hate walking out with neck length hair and coming back home with drawn up, ear length hair.

My Little Product Experiment
So, one day I washed my hair and conditioned it the night before and headed out the next morning after dampening it with water. The next day, I dampened it and added a bit of glycerine for moisture and shine.

I checked my pictures of my hair loaded with product and I actually had more hang with wet hair than I did with gelled up, shellacked hair. So I've been experimenting with less products. Wash and gos by wetting my hair with water and some glycerine and a little bit of Dax. Or twist outs with damp hair and glycerine.

Not super defined, but that's OK. I've yet to get super defined twist outs, even with lots of products, since my hair shrinks so much when product with water is applied. And I'm not sure how to "fix" that. I see girls with lush, awesome, defined twist outs with hang and I wonder if I'll ever get there.

With less product, I'm manipulating my hair less and saving a boatload on products.
How do your styles fare when you use less product?