The $2.80 Solution To Cleaner Makeup Brushes

Brush cleaning day never comes around when it should and I know all of you feel the same way. When you have (and consistently use) more than 10 brushes each week and you know you're supposed to get them clean every week to avoid bacteria buildup, it becomes too easy to avoid the task altogether. Recently (okay, maybe in the past two years) Sigma came out with their brush cleaning gloves which is essentially a silicone mitt with various 'bristles' to deep clean your brushes. Now, this glove costs a pretty penny for what it is and in ViviannaDoesMakeup's recent Drugstore Favourites video she mentioned that she used a Soap & Glory body exfoliating mitt to clean her brushes, which looks like a more basic version of the Sigma ones. This sparked the idea that essentially all I need was a silicone oven mitt that had some texture in them and I'm in business. 

You know when you're not looking for something at the shops and you see it everywhere and the moment you need it it magically disappears? Yeah, that was what this mitt was for me and I thought I would have hit the jackpot on a trip to Daiso (the $2.80 Japanese novelty shop popping up everywhere in Sydney) but unfortunately they didn't have it. What I did find was this flat hot pot holder and I thought Hey! Even better! 

That night, I brought all my makeup brushes to the bathroom sink and off I went. I poured some of the Johnson's Baby Conditioning Shampoo directly onto the mat as well as a few drops of Tea Tree Oil (which I forgot to photograph, dangit!) for its anti-bacterial properties. I then wet my brushes with hot water to loosen up the makeup and I went to town on the mat. I swirled the brushes again and again until they got bubbly and I rinsed them with lukewarm water. I repeated this process just because I tend to double wash my brushes and with quite a few kitchen towel sheets I removed as much water as I could from the bristles to help them dry faster. 

You cannot believe how much time I cut using this mat; my brushes were clean in no time! The best part is that I didn't have my hands being dried out by the shampoo and the hot water. I recently ran out of my Dr Bronner's Liquid Soap so I've been using the Johnson's one but I find the former to be a much better solvent for makeup. Once I get though the baby shampoos I have stashed under my sink, I'll be repurchasing the Dr Bronner's one in the large bottle. 

So, take my advice and invest in a cheap, textured oven mitt and you'll have much cleaner brushes and maybe, just maybe, brush cleaning might not turn out to be such a chore anymore…