A Clean Brush is a Girl's Best Friend

A quick and short introduction to my experience with cleaning makeup brushes.

I’m not really someone who goes around with a beat face 24/7 but I can say I love a good glam look every now and then. Achieving said look can sometimes be a struggle if you have acne-prone skin like me, however, there are a few tips and tricks I have picked up along the way that have made my makeup/skin routine virtually flawless — ok so maybe not all the way flawless, but you get where i’m going.

One of these tricks has been brush cleaning. I know, I know, you should always clean your brushes and there’s no excuse for routinely using makeup caked, dirt and germ infested makeup brushes on your face. But let’s face it, when it comes down to it, a lot of life’s daily demands tend to take priority on our to do lists. And sadly for me, my brushes have remained on the back-burner — that is, until now.

I was recently gifted a brush cleaning set for Christmas. (Not a complete set with the silicon patterned pad thing that really helps get all of the gunk and dirt off of your brushes but a nice brush shampoo and silicon drying rack — i’ll insert a picture.) Shout-out to my auntie! Though I have attempted to clean my brushes before — in the less fancy, scalding hot water and hand soap combination way — the results never really seemed worth while.

I would spend a lot of time getting my hands all wrinkly and pruney from the constant use of water and soap only to get a semi-clean result. Now enter the brush cleaning set. I’m telling you guys it has made a world of difference. My mom ended up buying herself the silicon patterned pad thing — which really means she bought it for us — and we both used it and various brush cleaning shampoos and gels to clean our makeup brushes this past week. I can honestly say the results were fab!

I still did get pruney hands but the almost two hours I spent cleaning my brushes (I have a lot of brushes) were worth it. I preferred the shampoos we used over the gel just because the lather they created really helped to break down the dirt and leftover foundation and eye shadows in my brushes. And after they dried for the night they looked good as new and ready to host the new slew of eyeshadows and highlighters that I was also gifted for Christmas. (Shout-out to my mom!)

So, all in all, I would totally recommend getting your hands on some sort of brush cleaning set. I forgot to mention how calming and almost therapeutic it felt to swirl and zig zag away on the silicon pad as the suds of the shampoo and gel striped away the numerous impurities from my brushes. At one point my mom compared me to a painter. (Maybe your everyday Picasso? We’ll see.) But regardless, a clean brush is one thing I will no longer take for granted. I think I may even start to work a cleaning routine into my busy schedule. Brush Cleaning Fridays? The name is still something to work on but it’ll get there.