Ah, I’m so proud of you for wanting to know about cleaning brushes! This is an all too easy step to miss in our busy lives. And let me tell you, I know how busy things can get so sometimes even my brushes go too long without getting a good clean. The gold standard in brush cleaning is once a week. Those that are successful with this, generally tie this in to a schedule of some sort. For example, a Sunday night activity before your work week gets started, or on a Saturday morning as part of your chore list. My biggest tip for you is to find a scheduled routine that works for you. Attach your brush cleaning to the time of day that you do a weekly ‘chore’ or activity. I try to do mine on a Sunday so I can look forward to clean brushes to start off my week.
You will find many different ways online to clean brushes. In my experience, here is what I recommend. It’s easy peasy lemon squeezey because let’s be honest, we don’t need to make this more difficult than it really is.
- Start with a clean sink (I keep a sponge and cleaning spray in my bathroom for ease)
- Plug up your sink
- Add one pump of handwash liquid in to your sink
- Add lukewarm water so that it’s about 1-2 inches high. If your longest brush is 2 inches, stick to about 2 inches of water. Go less if your brush is less than that. The goal is to keep a low level of water in the sink.
- Next, dunk only the head of the brush in to the water and swirl around. Be sure not to get the stalk of your brush in the water as that may loosen the glue between the brush portion and stalk. Use your fingers to work out any makeup. You’ll see the makeup fall off the brush in to the water. Sometimes I push the brush a little in to the side of the sink to help the makeup off.
- Do this with each brush and then empty the sink
- Rinse each brush under fresh water to make sure no soap residue remains
- Very gently squeeze out any water and tap the brush against your hand to begin to fluff up the brush.
- Set to dry either on a paper towel or I generally lay them flat around my sink, brush side dangling over the sink so that any drips end up in the sink
If I don’t have time or can’t be bothered to clean my sink, I empty out the mason jar that I use to store my brushes, and simply use that instead of the sink.
I generally wait overnight for a complete dry. Do not use wet brushes! And please do not use your hair dryer on your brushes – you may end up destroying your brushes.