laundry day.

It's probably fair to say, that when it comes to washing my make-up brushes, I'm the worst person in the world. I think you should probably wash them around once a week, but honestly I never seem to get around to it. So, since my brushes were crying out for a cleaning, I thought I'd write a blog post about how I go about it - mostly because it would force me to wash them...so, welcome to a post detailing how I wash my brushes aka 'laundry day'.

What you'll need:

Firstly, you'll need a mug of some sort that you don't mind putting soap into (so nothing priceless or particularly precious). I borrowed/stole an old enamel cup from my brother that was his when he was in the Scouts. As it stands, he's now 20 years old and has a sleeve tattoo, so it's safe to say his scouting days are over, and thus he wasn't bothered about my stealing his mug for brush cleaning purposes. But basically, don't use anything nice. You'll also need a towel to lay the brushes out to dry on - again, don't use your best towel. I basically reached into the back of the airing cupboard and retrieved a small towel that probably hasn't been used for 5 or so years - perfect. If you've cleaned your brushes properly, you won't get anything on the towel, but it's probably best to err on the side of caution.

The actual cleaning soap I use for my brushes is Dr Bronner's Magic Soap. It's one of those products that you can do lots of different things with - the bottle itself declares it to have 18 uses - but it's pretty perfect for brush laundry. It comes it lots of different scents, but if you're stuck choosing one, I think the tea tree one would be particularly appropriate for this purpose given it's antibacterial properties.

super cute Dr Bronner's packaging.

What to do:

The first thing to do is put a good few drops (10ish) of the Dr Bronner soap in the bottom of mug you've chosen to clean your brushes in, then add to that a little bit of warm water. You then need to put your dirty brush into the soapy water and swill it around. This will begin to break down any make-up that's on the brush.             

I made a gif to illustrate the swilling. Technological genius, much?

Once you've done that a few times you can rinse the brush in warm water. If you clean your brushes often, or if you don't tend to use them all that much, this might well be enough. You'll know, if the water coming out of the brush is clear. (Obviously. This wasn't supposed to be patronising, and yet it kind of is...)

rinsing.

However, given that I'm terrible at brush laundry, my brushes tend to need a lot more cleaning. So, I just pop a few drops of the soap into the palm of my hand and circle the brush until it creates a lather. At this point, I rinse the brush in warm water again, and depending on whether or not the water coming from it is clear, I'll repeat the step. I tend to have to do this step 3-4 times, but obviously the amount of product amassed on my brushes is probably a lot more than the average, more cleanly brush user.

creating quite the lather.

When you're happy that your brushes are now all squeaky clean, you need to construct a make-shift drying station with your towel. I believe you can actually buy things to dry your brushes on, but all you really need is a gradient to make sure the water doesn't go into the handle of the brush, so rolling your towel over a couple of times at one end should do the trick.

makeshift brush drying area.

And that's it. I find that it takes my brushes around 8 hours to dry, so I tend to wash them in the evening so that I can spend that time sleeping. Ingenious. Now all you need to do is destroy the evidence...

 NICE.

BIG thanks to my brother for helping me take pictures when I needed both of my hands. You might well be seeing more of him on here in the future. Watch this space...