I was blonde as a child and had wavy hair. My mother liked my blonde curls and called me Shirley Temple and fairly often curled my hair to emphasize that look.
She's a very kind, considerate woman and extremely smart, so she curled my hair without torturing me to do it.
We had a shoebox full of sponge curlers (let me recommend you update that to a plastic storage box) and she removed the plastic doohickie that closed the curlers and replaced it with a loop of nylon cloth made by cutting up nylon pantyhose because nylon doesn't unravel.
So at bedtime, she put curlers in my hair and pulled the loop of nylon over each opposite end to keep the curlers in. That way I could comfortably sleep in curlers and it only took a few minutes at bedtime to put them in, a few minutes when I got up to remove them and it gave me outrageous curls all day long without pain or chemicals or curling irons.
Footnote
I would shower or bathe in the evening, she typically curled it while it was still wet. You can't shower in the morning if you do this. It will mess up your curls.