I’ve lectured everyone before on why it’s important to wash your brushes, so I won’t go into that again today, but you should be doing it, just sayin’.

But what happens when you have one of those brushes that seems like it just never want to come clean, no matter how many times you wash it with brush cleaner, brush soap or sulfate free/ baby shampoo?

Most of the time this happens when you use said brush to apply long wearing, creamy and/or highly pigmented products. Some brush killing culprits in my regular rotation include MAC Pro Longwear Concealer, Stila Stay All Day Liquid Lipstick, and OCC Lip Tar and MAC Paint Pots just to name a few. I guess ‘made to cling to your face’ translates to ‘made to cling to your brush’ as well, womp wommmmmp.

Luckily there is a pretty simple solution to get it out of your brush, so you can return to blending properly ASAP.

Dish Soap! Yep, you already probably have some sitting right in your kitchen this whole time just waiting to get crap out of your brushes. Now this is not the most glamourous thing to use on a brush and it’s definitely not something I want on my face, but so long as you rinse rinse RINSE and get every last bit of soap off the brush you will be fine, and it will get the job done. Personally I like to use one that smells a little more . . .I don’t know, friendly? I feel less weird about using the coconut scent than the standard dawn smell or something, but thats really just straight up preference.

To use it you just do the same thing you would do with any other type of brush cleanser, but since I don’t think I ever actually showed anyone how I clean my brushes I’ll walk you through my process. Everyone and their Uncle Bill has a different way to do it, so this is just how I roll.

I’m starting with the brush I used to apply my MAC Pro Longwear Concealer. It almost looks like it’s beyond repair.

First I stand at the sink and just put a little dollop of dish soap in my palm. The amount in the photo is waaaaaaay more than you really need, but it’s hard to take pictures and wash a brush at the same time. You need maybe 1/3 of that.

Next I take the brush in question and swirl it around in my palm, coating it in the dish soap. Do this for a few seconds until it begins to form a lather.

Now It’s time to rinse. This part is important so take your time. I turn on the faucet with warm water, and start by swirling the brush around in my palm again. When the water coming off the brush runs completely clear and there is no sign of soap I then switch gears hold it under the water and use my thumb nail at the base of the bristles to push outward. This is a little trick I learned in art school to get oil paint out of a brush and it definitely translates to makeup. And they say I’m not really using my degree. Psssh!

Once it is thoroughly rinsed you can just lay it out to dry, and it should look good as new, like the picture above. This will little trick get most colorful stains, cream eyeshadows and the like out of your brushes as well.

See? Good as new! Easy Peasy 😉