Hello! Anyone else do a crappy job of cleaning their make-up brushes? I tend to forget…a lot. And then I wind up breaking out whenever I apply make-up because of all the old oils and dirt that’s collected on the brushes.
Cleaning them used to be a huge pain, though. I’d lather them up with soap and then run them under warm water to try and remove it all. All I wound up doing was creating more work for myself and destroying my brushes in the process.
There’s an easier way!
What you’ll need:
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 1/2 tsp dish soap
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- 1/2 tsp olive oil (optional)–This helps keep brushes soft.
Step 01: Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl or cup.
Step 02: Prepare a towel so you can quickly set your brushes down to dry. Swirl your brush around in the cleaning liquid and then rinse it off. (If I’m not doing this over the sink, then I have two other bowls/cups filled with water. The first is used to get the soap bubbles off and the second is use for rinse everything out of the brush.) This part actually gets pretty gross.
Dirty soap water. That’s only after two or three brushes. No wonder I’ve been breaking out so frequently lately…. I put this off for way too long.
Step 04: Reshape the bristles and then lay your brushes back out on the towel and let them dry over night. Or, if you’re impatient like me, you can dry them with a hair dryer. I don’t do this often because I don’t want to destroy them. And when I do it, I use the cool setting.
So clean!
And you’re done! Brushes will be much softer, make-up will go on better, and you hopefully won’t break out nearly as often.
Note: I’ve seen a lot of recipes using baking soda, but I don’t recommend adding that. It would be better to use that by itself, on brushes you use for oily products (such as concealers and lip sticks). Baking soda reacts to vinegar and basically leaves behind water, so it’s not as useful when they’re mixed together.
To keep my brushes organized, I use this handy magnetic make-up holder.