Makeup Brush Hack

I have a confession to make: I don’t clean my makeup brushes often enough! It’s so important not only for your brushes, but also for your own health to get all of the makeup and bacteria off the brushes. The only problem is: I am kinda broke after my move to New York, so I wanted to find a cheap alternative to purchasing a new brush cleaner. I’ve heard baby shampoo works wonders, but I didn’t want to shell out any money if possible!

I came across this BuzzFeed video in which they cleaned a beauty blender with dish soap and olive oil. I already had both of those items just chillin in my kitchen, so I decided why not try it on ALLLL of my makeup brushes.

At first it sounded like a strange combo, but dish soap and olive oil actually make a lot of sense to clean brushes. Dish soap was designed to kill bacteria and make dishes clean enough to eat off of, so it’s pretty much guaranteed to kill the germs and flush out a ton of makeup. Dish soap can also be pretty drying on the skin, so on its own it would most likely dry out the bristles of the brushes. This is where the olive oil comes in. It’s full of hydrating and nourishing nutrients which are normally great for conditioning your hair, but also works to condition the brush bristles!

There are a lot of mixing ratios you can find on the internet, but I just eyeballed it and put about equal parts of olive oil and dish soap. I was a little bit skeptical at first because the mixture looked so funky, kinda like a lava lamp.

I was AMAZING with the results. Particularly with my duo fiber brush! I”ve had this brush for about 2 years and the bristles have been stained pretty much ever since the first time I used it. The dish soap and olive oil made the bristles look almost as good as new and they were finally white again!!

My makeup brushes were also insanely soft from the olive oil.  My only advice is to make sure that you rinse out the brushes as much as possible! I rinsed some brushes better than others and the bristles got a little bit clumpy. Overall, this hack was amazing and I highly recommend trying this trick!