How I wash my brushes (with the Palmolive® soft touch™ dish soap)

Makeup brushes get dirty. Bacteria and product accumulates on them, and they need to be washed. If they don't get washed, I bet you you'll have a few nasty breakouts pop up.

So how do you do it? There are many ways. But I just deep clean them every couple of weeks with olive oil, dish soap, and water. Now, you can spot clean your brushes. Spot cleaning is great if you have just used a brush with one color and want to quickly use it again for another. However, if you do this, you still need to deep clean, because spot cleaning won't get everything.

I love to mix olive oil and dish soap with water because I find it doesn't dry out my brushes, but it still gets them really clean. The dish soap I'm using at the moment is the Palmolive Soft Touch Dish Soap*, which was sent to me by the lovely folks at Influenster. The soap is supposed to be "soft on hands" so you don't turn into a lizard mid dish-wash. I, however, use dish gloves when I wash my dishes, so this was irrelevant for me.

However, I love using this particular dish soap for washing my makeup brushes. It's extra gentle and OMG it is the BEST smelling dish soap on the planet (the coconut scent is my favorite, mmm). It's safe it say when I run out, I'll be purchasing a bottle all by myself. I have the Vitamin E and Coconut scents, so the Aloe is next on my list.

So back to the brushes after that obvious plug...

I just mix (in a bowl or cup) a nickel size amount of olive oil with a quarter sized amount of my dishsoap and add a tiny bit of water. I want the water to not be too high in the bowl, because it shouldn't come past the ferule of the brush when you put the brush into the bowl. If you get the ferule (the metal part of the brush that keeps all the hairs in place) wet, the hairs become loose, and your brush will shed. Not good.

I just swill my brush (which has already been made wet) in the soap mix, and rinse under a cool tap. I repeat until I can squeeze the brush with no product or soap coming out.

Then I gently squeeze the hairs with a towel and reshape and lie the brush flat hanging off of the edge of the sink or whatever. You don't want the bristles to be pointing up at the sky because water will drip into the ferule, and you don't want to have anything under the brush hairs except air. Otherwise, it'll mildew. Ew.

Hope that was helpful!

PS*.. Here's a bunch of stuff I have to mention:
Palmolive is Tough on Grease, Soft on Hands

• Here's the Palmolive® website and review page
• You can find soft touch™ at Walmart

 I received these items complimentary from Influenster, and all opinions are my own.