Proper regular cleaning of your makeup brushes is more important than you may realize. Did you know that bacteria like Staphylococcus, E. coli and a multitude of viruses and fungi live naturally on your skin? Buildup of any of these on makeup brushes can cause acne, dermatitis, impetigo and herpes simplex. I could keep going but you get the point!
Truthfully, the tools we use every day on our bodies can be just as dirty, if not more so than our toilets.
Let that sink in for a second.
Keeping this in mind, it’s important that you clean your makeup brushes and sponges regularly. This may sound daunting, but it’s actually pretty easy when you make it part of your regular routine. You might even want to do it daily after applying your makeup. This is especially true if you struggle with acne, skin infections, cold sores, or if your kids play with your makeup.
We don’t claim to be doctors here in the #cleaningarmy but we do know a thing or two about disinfection. I was a professional makeup artist in a past life, so in pursuit of helping you stay clean, organized, and healthy, allow me to share my combined knowledge.
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Terminology
Here are some terms that may be new to you.
Bristles are the “hair” of the brushes. Most brands have switched over to synthetic fiber bristles versus natural animal hair bristles. Both natural and synthetic bristles can be cleaned the same way.
Ferrules are the metal portion that holds the bristles in place, and are typically nickel-plated brass or aluminum.
Handles tend to be birch or bamboo, coated in varnish, paint, resin or plastic.
Over time, any and all of these will break down. But with proper maintenance and care, they can last a very long time. My personal brushes have lasted over 20 years. You will always get what you pay for, so these are not the type of items to purchase at the dollar store. Buy quality stuff and take care of it – that’s our mantra. (Canada) (USA)
What you need:
- Dawn® dish soap
- Isopropyl Alcohol
- Silicon makeup cleaning pad (Optional) (Canada) (USA)
- A small bowl
You may have noticed how much we LOVE Dawn® dish soap in the #cleaningarmy, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we use it for our makeup brushes too. Dawn is gentle enough not to damage the delicate bristles and is safe for skin contact.
Weekly/Biweekly Cleaning:

- Fill a small bowl with warm water and a few drops of blue Dawn® dish soap. Swirl your brush bristles in the solution, taking care to not get the handle and ferrule soaking wet. Gently massage the bristles with a silicon pad or your hand and watch the gunk magically release. (Alternatively, you can put a drop of blue Dawn® dish soap in the palm of your hand or the pad and massage the bristles mixed with warm tap water.)
- Rinse the bristles carefully until the water runs clear.
- Blot or brush out any excess water with a towel. Lay or stand (link) your brushes to dry.
- Once they are fully dry, fluff them up with your hand to reshape the bristles.
The thing I love so much about this process is that it’s fast and easy. You might even want to keep a mini bottle of blue Dawn® dish soap in your bathroom cupboard. Then, all you have to do is squirt a couple of drops and clean. Not only can this method be used for brushes and sponges, but it’s also effective for cleaning beauty blenders and reusable makeup remover pads too.

Disinfecting:
The Dawn dish soap will only remove the make-up and oil build-up. Disinfecting is the final step in long term maintenance and good hygiene for your brushes, but most importantly your skin. Soaking your brushes in 70% alcohol is needed to kill bacteria and viruses. 70% is the perfect mixture of isopropanol and purified water. Here’s the simple step-by-step:
- Fill a small bowl with isopropyl alcohol. Soak smaller brush bristles for 10 mins. Larger brushes should only be soaked for a couple minutes. Make sure to not soak the ferrule or handle as the adhesives will break down over time.
- Remove excess alcohol and reshape the bristles.
- Lay or stand (Canada) (USA) your brushes to dry.
- Once they are fully dry, fluff them up with your hand to reshape the bristles.
Pro Tip: Daily misting of your bristles before applying makeup using 70% alcohol is an easy effective way to disinfect. The spray alcohol dries fast so your bristles won’t be wet. You can also spray all your pressed and cream powders.
Now you have the knowledge to get your glam on, confident that you are keeping your skin healthy. Don’t let our cleaning content fool you, we love getting dolled up too.
Welcome to Basic Training, You Dirty Bastard
Being clean and organized extends beyond the four walls of your bathroom and includes cleaning and maintaining your kitchen, bedroom, living room, and all of the small and large spaces in between.
Want to know how to approach each of these rooms so that you have a home that sparkles and shines? Check out our Basic Training interactive course that walks you through the exact techniques we use to clean our clients’ homes.
For a list of our favorite products, click here.
- Katie W @GoCleanCo
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Follow @GoCleanCo for seriously satisfying videos and top-secret tips. Don’t be shy, come say hi.
gocleanco
Sep 24
Heya. 👋🏼 Sarah here. We are wrapping up Week One (Kitchen Week—the most overwhelming) of the Fall Cleaning challenge. How is it going? What have you got done? My job during these Challenges is to motivate and help educate you on the most efficient and effective ways to clean so you feel confident about moving onto the next week with us! The Cleaning Challenges get easier each time we do them as it’s a scheduled, routine deep clean that helps you stay on top of things before they get out of hand. If you deep cleaned in the Spring Challenge with us, I know (based on the hundreds of DM’s🤣) that this week felt easier because you lined the tops of your cupboards with parchment paper in the Spring! I find it hard to put into writing how cleaning can make you feel SO GOOD, satisfied and proud of your home. I can’t explain the feeling feeling until you roll up your sleeves and get to work and feel it yourself. Once one room is done, please stop and stand back and survey your work. Take a minute to feel the accomplishment in your bones. This is hard but rewarding work and you CAN do it—I will cheer you on the entire way. Keep sending me your before and afters! They make me so happy and proud of each you, I feel like I am helping clean millions of homes around the world and that’s honestly pretty cool. 😎
gocleanco
Sep 22
It’s Kitchen week of the Fall Cleaning Challenge and I can finally share my new kitchen sink from BLANCO that everyone has been asking about. I am very excited to be working with @blancoamerica1 they are THE kitchen experts and a global brand with over 95 years of experience. Head to my stories to see how I care for this beauty on the daily and how easy it is to treat stains. BLANCO is more than just sinks; they also have faucets and organizational systems (like the BOTTON) that work together as an integrated UNIT. #ad
gocleanco
Sep 19
We kicked off the Fall Cleaning Challenge by flying to Burnaby, British Columbia and cleaning our Spring Cleaning Challenge (2023) winners house! We had so much fun doing this clean. Lots of team work, planning and love was poured into this project! Getting cheered on by you folks makes it all worth it! Being able to pay our good fortune forward to our followers makes us all warm and fuzzy. Big thanks to our brand partners who generously hooked us up with so much gifted stuff for the winner. We all need to go nap for 3 days now 😂 Did you enter the Fall Cleaning Challenge so that this can be you Spring 2024?! Link in our bio or head to our website to enter. #cleaning Special thanks to @ruggable @bollandbranch @oceansalesltd @proctergamble @amazoninfluencerprogram 💕
gocleanco
Sep 15
Want to open your front door and see our smiling faces coming to clean your house? Then you better get over to bleachpraylove.com on Monday, September 18th and join the Fall Cleaning Challenge! That’s right, the Grand Prize is a house clean by yours truly and my crew. We fly to you and give your house a top to bottom clean like only we can. How does the Fall Cleaning Challenge work? Each week for four weeks follow along and clean your house with me! Plus we have soooo cool many prizes! Each week we will be giving away some of my favorite things like @bollandbranch @ruggable @sharkbeauty blow dryers, and my personal fav cold hard 💰 to help you catch up on bills, buy a new vacuum or hire someone to help you with your looming House Work if you can’t get caught up! If you want to see more of our adventure at the Spring Cleaning Challenge winners house stay tuned in stories for the next few days PLUS we are filming it all for YouTube and you can watch it all the behind the scenes dirty laundry…The good, the bad…the filthy. Love you folks. For reals. 💕 Thank you for making our job so fun! #cleaningmotivation
gocleanco
Aug 25
No visit from @hellohairhouse is complete without a kitchen haircut! #fallhairtrends
gocleanco
Aug 24
The Fall Cleaning Challenge starts on Monday Sept 18th, 2023. Y’all ready? The download will be available on September 18th and the grand prize is a house clean by yours truly! We also have some new vacuum testing coming your way 😈 My garage is FULL of suckers baby and I’m not mad about it. #fallcleaning
gocleanco
Aug 19
Update: It’s a damn ice box in here and I’ve been sleeping like a baby. #airconditioning
gocleanco
Aug 8
Perfect example that cleaning 👏🏻 is 👏🏻 home 👏🏻 maintenance 👏🏻 Take care of your stuff and it will last longer. This little handy-dandy-doo-dad scrubber is linked in my Amazon Storefront. #cleaningtips
gocleanco
Aug 3
Had fun in the angels’ city chasing fortune and fame 😎 Thanks @amazoninfluencerprogram for #hosting me. And no I didn’t get tickets to any shows this weekend but for the rest of you—take the moment and taste it. 🫶🏼
gocleanco
Jul 19
To the Salon!!!!!! (Or in this case, the laundry room.) Saved these fabulous scuffed up pumps with some @tidelaundrystainremover a cloth and some patience. Just in time for @barbiethemovie premiere! Have fun @lauren_lally always happy to be of service 🫡 #barbiethemovie
gocleanco
Jul 12
Bathroom organization top picks! Everything is in my storefront to 🛍️ #amazonfinds
gocleanco
Jul 11
Summer is here! Clean up your space so you actually want to hangout in it. That hot tub…it’s not mine…k🤦🏼♀️ Link in bio for these products, some are on sale for Prime Day, just check the albums for your country.
gocleanco
Jul 11
Robot Vacuum Fight Club! 💪🏻 Things we threw on the floor: Shreddies, Powdered Tide, (clean) Cat Litter, A crumbled up loaf of sourdough and good old dirt! Stay tuned for the results. 🧐 #thiswasmorefunthaniexpected
gocleanco
Jul 8
Spent my morning making a very aesthetically pleasing Raspberry Pie Reel for y’all but it ended up being a Raspberry Scramble 🥴💀 Wasn’t gonna post it BUT when life feels like a scramble it can still be delicious. 🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼 Please consider this my official petition to bring @jello back as a dessert staple.
gocleanco
Jul 7
Shower tracked destroyed with built up hard water minerals? Here’s an easy solution with a simple house hold ingredient and elbow grease. Still gonna take some scrubbing friends, good results take work. #cleaningtips
gocleanco
Jul 6
Is pressure washing considered a form of therapy? Asking for a friend. #backupvocalsduuuuuuuuupe
gocleanco
Jun 29
Years in the making…it’s FINALLY here…and it’s a masterpiece. Over the years I have received thousands of DM’s asking what to pick when renovating your home. What is the easiest to clean? What will survive the test of time? So I compiled it all here in our Home Renovation Guide. Apologies for taking so long but we kept adding and it kept getting longer and longer. This has been a labour of love. Link in bio to purchase or tap to shop! #itsbeenalongtimecoming
gocleanco
Jun 21
Sounds like a lot of you have slime problems. Here’s how we got it out! Sprinkle baking soda on the slime and smush it down into the carpet fibres so it gets in deep. Add straight vinegar and let it sit for about 30 mins. Scrub it with a brush. Repeat until it’s gone! When you repeat, you need to let it sit each time for 30 mins so it starts to break down the slime. We scrubbed for 30 mins too, don’t give up! Think about how expensive the damn carpet is to replace and that will give you lots of energy! As always: It is a good idea to test an inconspicuous spot first (like in a closet) before try you so this because all carpets are different. Try at your own risk but also if you have dried slime all over your carpet I think you are screwed anyways. GOOD LUCK and report back. #slime #slimetoturial
gocleanco
Jun 18
I’m a simple creature. Here’s the haul I promised from the viral sweater set. Yellow usually isn’t my colour but I’m feeling it the most! Wearing a medium, it’s machine washable but I have been laying it flat to dry. Everything is linked in my bio and up in my stories. #amazonfinds
gocleanco
Jun 17
If you thought I was going to miss an opportunity to use this bop, you were wrong. Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there, reminder that a clean tractor is a sexy tractor. @kubotacanada if you wanna detail this thing next year LMK. 🚜 🧽 🫧😎