Damn Dirty Ape, or How to Clean your Mason Pearson (Updated!)

Update: Dear people of the internet, I love you. I live for you. You are wonderful and you make me laugh with your gifs and teacup pigs and whozzit-whatzits. I love you, I do. But I would like to take this opportunity to make clear that I do appreciate getting comments on this silly little thing called blog. I do prefer the comments / criticisms to be constructive but I understand that, hey, sometimes you've got other things going on. Sometimes the need to share just bubbles up and out of ya and sometimes it can come across wrong. I get that. I AM that. So with that being said... I must request that you please try to keep commentary polite and not knee-jerk and, most importantly, constructive. I get enough GUFF being an overly self-conscious and polite person in a big, mean city! So with THAT being said... I wanted to make a few clarifications on the below - not because I am admitting defeat - but because I am admitting that portions of the below could be written a bit clearer - and I love y'all too much to be responsible for anybody ruining their precccioussessssss. That is all.

Now, I was never one of those girls who grew up dreaming of a Mason Pearson brush. Maybe it's not an American thing? But it seems that everyone I come across who owns one muses about how "this is THE brush that I ALWAYS wanted since I was a LITTLE GIRL!". Little Girl Gigi hated and feared brushes. In fact, most days that I was staying over at my dad's we would just throw my nest into one of the many beige gummy rubber bands that Daddy perenially kept around his wrist....

Which should actually only be used for this....

 Or this.....

Waheyyyyy.

My own acquisition of a Mason Pearson brush was a combination of two of my fatal flaws:

1) My being a sucker for packaging (Hello, cute wine labels belying purple nail polish remover!)
2) My inability to say "No!" once an item is rung up... an item which I had not known the price of before...

So that was that. Cool salon (Pro Green goes there... which used to make it cool but not after this Made in Chelsea shiiiiiiiiiiit) PLUS my standard awkward human interaction EQUALS wonderful Mason Pearson acquisition.

Once I brought my baby home and placed it lovingly next to its cleaning brush, I got an endless stream of abuse from friends... about no wonder I'm broke all the time.

But once you feel that bastard on your weary scalp - it all melts away. I would like to say that I also let these naysayers have a go at her... but nuh-uh, screw 'em. Their punishment is to crawl through life without ever having tasted the sweet sensation of Mssrs Mason et Pearson.

All that aside.... this brush is a very real investment... it friggin' comes with instructions?!?!?! Which I threw away a long time ago and probably wouldn't read anyways because I am arrogant and stupid.

So then when it comes to cleaning my precious I had to turn to the internet.

The original directions can be found here: Mason Pearson

But that's soooo much text and I am of a wayward illiterate generation... Give me pictures!

Blush Pretty

Ah! That's better. But a toothbrush? ::While probably a GOOD idea:: I say heck nah. I am not investing more into this bastard.

So I bring you... Body by Burgers Super Lazy Mason Pearson Brush Cleaning Bonanza

Thing the first... Do NOT wait for friggin' ages between cleanings... cuz thass nasty. (me = hypocrite). But really, it will be much easier to clean if you don't wait for it to get gooey-gummed up with your DNA

Thing the second... the bare mitts treatment. If you have waited a little too long between cleanings, use your bare mitts to remove the surface fluff of matted hair

Thing the third... Use the incredibly awesome "brush-cleaning-brush" to work through the next layer of ever more gummed and matted hair combined with finger picking to get all the hair out

Thing the fourth... Now, if you are like me, and use an inordinate amount of hair product and crap then the brush will have lovely little reservoirs and lumps of old product. This is where some hot, I mean, lukewarm water from the tap comes in. (In the MP official instructions, they advise dampening the cleaning brush and then using that on the main brush but, again, am lazy.) In my experience a QUICK run of lukewarm water along JUST the bristles is the trick. Too much wet and the bristles may go limp... ALSO try not to get the pad at all, you lazy mucky puppy too much or the rest of the brush... I say this because I remember as a child immersing my big paddle brush in water and then water would get trapped behind the pad and get all swamp-nasty - and oh yeah it might ruin the dang thing as well.

Thing the fifth... The fleetingly. romantically quick running under hot lukewarm water should have caused the product to loosen... just grab a non-fuzzy flannel and in a picking / swiping motion (not a scrubbing or rubbing motion or else you will just redeposit more fluff on the brush) use it to get the rest of the product out.

Ta-Dah! And Boom Shaka Laka...

Look at that beautiful monster. Over 1 year old and still sittin' pretty.

Credits: Memoirs of a Roving Mind, Wikipedia, Juliet Cloud Cuckoo Land