Let’s cut to the chase. We all know we should clean our makeup brushes. I don’t need to convince you. Old makeup and bacteria gunk up your brushes, causing them to not work as well, plus you’re spreading bacteria grossness all over your face.
Unless you already have a specific brush cleaning spray/shampoo (but how effective is it, really?), it’s such a pain to mix all the ingredients together every single time. And are you sure those ingredients are removing the gunk and not just gunking up your brushes more? Not to mention, depending on how often you use your brushes, you should be washing them every 1-2 weeks. Ugh, what a pain. So – let me tell you a secret.
This brush cleaning method takes so little time, your brushes will actually feel clean and de-gunked (basically good as new!), you know the bacteria is effectively being removed, and you won’t destroy your bristles or brush handle.
What you’ll need:
- Hand soap or dish soap– I use Thieves dish soap because it contains no dyes, synthetics, formaldehyde, and other yucky stuff, and while it’s tough enough to use on dishes, it’s gentle enough to use on my hands, therefore brushes, too.
- Paper towels or hand towelto lay your brushes on to dry
- A makeup brush glove– It’s pretty small, so only 2 of my fingers fit in. It works great for most brush sizes, unless you have a lot of really large brushes.
How to clean your makeup brushes:
- Have your towel spread out and ready by the sink, water on a warm temp, and soap nearby. Wet your brush glove, squirt a dime size amount of soap on it, and wet the tip of your brush.
- Rub your brush against the glove (not too rough – you don’t want to ruin the shape or bristles), and watch the soap lather and change color from your brush. You’ll realize how dirty your brush REALLY was.
- Rinse the glove, and run the brush over it again, rinse the glove again, and run the brush over it, until your brush isn’t leaving dirty residue on the glove. It should only take a couple times. Then, lay your brush out to dry, and grab the next brush!
- Repeat until all brushes are clean! So easy. So fast.
One last tip – make sure to allow the brushes to dry overnight, so you don’t have damp brushes next time you need them.
I love this method because not only does it take half the time of swishing your brush around and rinsing it out until it’s finally clean, which seems like forever, but it also doesn’t require your entire brush to get dunked in water. Most girls don’t realize this, but when you submerge your whole brush in water, you’re damaging the “ferrule” – the metal band that’s glued to the brush’s handle. Doing this over and over again eventually causes the brush to break.
