How to Clean Makeup Brushes (So Fast and Easy!)

Do you clean your makeup brushes regularly?  I will totally raise my hand and say I hardly ever clean them.  I am inching toward another birthday though and these days taking really good care of my skin is a top priority for me.

So time to put on the big girl underpants and start taking more notice of the things I use on my skin- an easy task to tackle is keeping your brushes nice and clean.  Fortunately you can do this in just a minute or two and use what you already have on hand. If you aren’t cleaning your brushes you have so much gross stuff on there– really it is important.  The brushes collect bacteria, dead skin cells, layers of old makeup…  The colors you are putting on can get muddled with the old stuff and not look as fresh.  So really it is important to take the time to clean these guys.  I don’t know about you but I have enough trouble on my hands trying to fight off wrinkles and sun damage I certainly don’t need to invite in pimples and clogged pores too :P.

To clean your brushes just takes the following:

• gentle dish soap (I used Palmolive)
• dry towel
• water source
• means of drying brushes (see my method below but you might call up your inner MacGyver and come up with something better)

The trick here – especially if you have expensive brushes- is to make sure you aren’t getting the base of your brush wet.  You only want to clean the bristles so try hard to put the soap and water on the fluffy parts only.  If the wood does get wet, the little hairs from the brush can start to fall off and ruin the brush. So I just set up a dish towel and my brushes and grabbed the Palmolive and went to work.

I like to dab a tiny bit of dish soap onto my hand and then place the brush under water to wet it.  Then I gently rub the brush on the palm of my hand in a circular motion.  You will get a tiny bit of foam and you will likely see some powder or blush or whatever coming off on your hand. I don’t wear very much makeup and when I do it is light shades so I don’t see tons of color coming off my brushes.  I like to just keep rinsing and repeating until I don’t see any more makeup coming off on my palm at all and then I just hold the brush end under a light stream of water until it is clear of soap and makeup. See easy right? For my smaller brushes you can either use the method above or you can just dab the brush into a small bowl with a drop of dish soap and water.

The only other challenge with this is that you need to dry the brushes completely before using them again.  You don’t want to dry the brushes upside down or sideways because the water can get into the base of the brush and make it fall apart.

I like to just grab some washi tape and I just tape the smaller brushes to a mason jar and that keeps them upside down to dry.  Pretty simple. The washi will pull right off and won’t leave residue on your brushes or jar.

For the larger brushes I can just rest them against the jar and that seems to work well.  You can pick up Washi in the Dollar section at Target stores so not a big investment there. And now your brushes are perfectly clean and ready to use!

If you wear a lot of makeup you might consider doing this weekly.  If you wear very light makeup once a month should be sufficient. Oh and you can also use baby shampoo to clean brushes- I prefer dish soap because that is something everyone has on hand already.

Palmolive does make a super gentle baby dish soap that is like $2 and will last you forever. Also if you have a second there is a very cool resource from Palmolive that provides some different ways to use the dish soap– besides just dishes. I thought this rainbow foam looked amazing– how fun to make for the bathtub!

Oh I have teamed up with a handful of bloggers to offer a nice giveaway of (5) $50 Walmart gift cards.  You can click the box below to enter to win.  It is really fast to enter and an extra $50 would come in handy…. 25 Ways To Use Palmolive
And here are a few other tips you might like:

One Ingredient Deep Conditioning treatment for hair

Homemade All natural Makeup Remover

Perfectly clean your sunglasses in just seconds

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Lunchbox. All opinions are my own.