The Fastest Way To Clean Your BeautyBlender Is To Microwave It

Pre-bedtime Internet surfing can really change lives. And I say this with a 101% commitment, because just last night at 12am, I did what everyone should be doing — I microwaved my BeautyBlender.
Also yes, in case you were wondering, nothing exploded, and I hadn’t gone mad from the pre-Monday morning dread. What happened was this piece of vital information on Popsugar that appealed so much to my lazy self — I actually pulled myself out of bed (how ironic) at odd hours of the night to try it out.

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As you all might have already guessed it, the article was a BeautyBlender cleaning hack, courtesy of Twitter user @2chiinzzz. Now, if you knew me personally, you’d know that I love hacks. Anything to make my (makeup) life easier. And if you’ve seen my vanity kit, you’d probably be all grossed out at the sight of my trusty BeautyBlender, because I haven’t got down to washing it in a month (or maybe two, I don’t even remember) just because…… cleaning my beauty tools is a massive chore and I’d rather snooze my Sunday afternoon away. Privileged human being with major first world problems, I know.
(In my defence, it takes incredibly long to fully get rid of all the gunk that’s inside a beauty sponge. Those of you who use BeautyBlenders, please step forth to take my side.)
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But anyway, the hack seemed pretty easy enough for me to get on board with, and it also helped that the Twitter community responded pretty positively to it. So here goes:
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L-R: prep, before putting cup into microwave, after one minute of microwaving, after rinsing off

1. Pop BeautyBlender into a microwavable cup with dishwashing liquid / sponge cleaner
2. Microwave cup for one minute
3. Remove cup and let BeautyBlender cool before wringing any water out
4. Spend a couple of seconds marvelling at the amount of foundation gunk from your sponge that’s now transferred to the water in the cup
5. Do another round of quick rinse with dishwashing liquid / sponge cleaner
6. Gawk at your cleaned BeautyBlender. It’s like a whole new world.
Bottom line is: The. Hack. Works!!! I made the mistake of being overly enthusiastic in wringing the water out of the sponge immediately and might have scalded myself slightly, but boy, you have no idea how crazy satisfying it is to see everything squeezed out. Granted that it didn’t remove every single bit of foundation, it did a pretty darn impressive job of ridding at least 80% of whatever that was on my sponge. Mind you, I use my sponge every single day without fail, and for a minute-long hack to effectively remove the sh*t that was accumulated in however long that I’ve failed to clean my Blender, it’s amazing. The remaining gunk took me a breezy minute to manually remove as well too.


And just to answer a few queries that my colleagues posed during our meeting where I very excitedly exclaimed this new discovery:
Does the sponge still feel soft to the touch?
Yes it does. Nothing about the texture changed, but I can’t say the same if you used a dishwashing liquid instead of a sponge cleaning detergent. Do yourself a favour and get the very affordable and effective from from Daiso at just $2!
Did anything melt?
Rest assured that nothing melted. I just used my sponge this morning and all is fine.
How long is the recommended time to microwave?
I popped mine in for a good one minute. You can always try anything from 30-45 seconds too; what the heat does is to force all the gunk out while sterilising the sponge.
Can I microwave brushes?
Um, not recommended. Brushes have that metal component to them and you can’t microwave metal! This is what will cause an explosion.
Any other things that I can microwave?
Popcorn! And perhaps makeup remover gloves and tanning mitts. The cushions found in BB cushions should be safe too. Anything without metal.
Header Image: @beautyblender IG