Cleaning Your Hairbrush and Keeping It Clean

So lately I've been playing around with hair chalk.  The problem with hair chalk is when you brush it out of your hair, your hairbrush is filled with chalk residue.  Also, even when you comb hair out of your brush, there are still some left over and after a while, you need to clean your brush or buy a new one.

This is how I clean my brush:

You'll need a deep Tupperware container, dish soap and an old tooth brush.  I used about 2 tablespoons of dish soap and then filled the Tupperware dish with hot water.  I placed my brushes into the water.  I have 3 brushes: one for clean hair, one for brushing my hair when it has dry shampoo in it and brush that I keep with my duffel-bag for when I travel.  I went out of town over Memorial Day weekend with blue hair chalk in my hair-- it definitely needed to be cleaned.

Soak the brushes for about 10 minutes.

Once they've soaked for a little while, lay out some paper towel on the table and use the toothbrush to scrub between all the little tines.  You've going to pull out wet hair and it's going to be kind of gross, but it's to be expected.  

Once you're done scrubbing, run the brushes under some warm water.  Then dump the water out of the Tupperware container and rinse it out.  Then fill it with clean, warm water and let the brush soak again.  There are little holes in your brush and you don't want to have soapy water trapped in it and half a brush filled with mildew.

I soaked the toothbrush too

Again, soak the brush for about 10 minutes and then rinse it again.  Afterwards, lay out a towel and let your brush air dry face down.

Once they're dry, we move on to keeping your brush clean for the future.  I saw a life hack on Pinterest that said to cut a swatch of fabric the size of your brush and place it over the tines then every time you need to clean your bush, you just lift up the fabric and it pulls up all of the hair and lint in the brush.  This is a good idea in theory but what kind of fabric fits over these brushes?

A brush after it has been cleaned

First I tried some ribbed tank tops that were old and had gotten some tiny holes in them.  Didn't work.

Then I tried socks.  The ankle part of a sock actually does fit over the brush decently, but there's so much elastic in them that all of the little tines clump together and it's not going to brush properly.  I had some socks that had never been worn that I tried but they did not work.

My fiance's mom bought him socks for Christmas but they were for kids and  they barely fit me

Finally I found an old knit hoodie that was meant to have holes in it.  It was originally while but about 10 years old and yellowing.

I cut off the hood and started covering my brushes.  It sounds weird but I used the toothbrush to smash down the fabric over the tines and it worked really well.

The finished product.  Tada!

I also think that fabric from a sweater that's loosely knit would also work.  Next time I have to clean my brush, it'll be much much easier to clean.