We’re all friends right? You wouldn’t judge me or run for the hills if I opened up and shared with you? I hope not, because today will test our friendship as I’m about to show you my foam/sponge rollers and they are … gross. In an attempt to get my life back into order after the chaos of 2020, I thought I’d share my method of cleaning my foam/sponge rollers. I used to wash them monthly but I’ve let that habit slip and I’m a little behind. It’s a really simple method of washing so I hope it helps you.
For those wondering, these were the curlers I originally bought and they have served me very well.

So here they are, my rollers in all their questionable glory. I’ve had some of these for over 5 years so they are a little worse for wear but they have served me well. For all those still in the room, let us begin with the cleaning process.

Step One; Remove all the hair
As you use your rollers, you’ll start to notice that sometimes hair gets stuck on them so that’s the first thing I remove. If I can’t rip the hair out, I’ll take a small pair of scissors and carefully snip the hair out.

Step Two: Remove the plastic
Once your rollers are hair free, I take out the inner plastic stem and the roller latch. To wash these, I give them a wipe with a baby wipe as they are normally pretty clean.

Step Three: Prepare your roller bath
Normally, I will fill up a small bucket with warm water and add some shampoo to the water. As shampoo removes dirt and product from your hair, I find that it works on your rollers too. I normally use whatever shampoo I have in the shower or sometimes, I have some hotel shampoos laying around and I’ll use those instead.

Step Four: Bath time
Put all your foam pieces into your tub and gently squeeze them whilst in the water. I also rub the curlers between my fingers and massage the water into the foam. If there are a few particularly gross curlers, feel free to add more shampoo and continue massaging. After a few minutes and when I think the rollers are clean, I’ll let them soak in the soapy water for around 10-15 minutes.

Step Five: Rinse
After pouring out the dirty water into my garden, I then rinse the foam under clean running water until they are fully rinsed. You should at this stage see that they look a lot cleaner and brighter.

Step Six: Dry
I like to place the rollers onto a towel and leave them out in the sun to dry. They normally take about half an hour to fully dry (thanks Aussie sun) and the sun will also help with the cleaning process.

Step Seven: Reassemble
Once the foam is fully dry, I just reassemble the curlers by re-inserting the plastic stem and outer plastic square. I then return the curlers to their normal beauty bag ready for future use.

And that’s it. Nothing special, ground breaking or crazy but just a simple cleaning tutorial. If you have clean rollers, your styling will be much smoother as you don’t risk your hair sticking to old product. As a pinup, I use a fair amount of product which can cause build up on my tools (wait till you see my brushes … oh my goodness). Alas, you are now ready to continue styling your hair with your newly cleaned rollers.
If you are looking to get a new set of rollers, these are the ones I have been using for years and I love them.

Note: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions and thoughts expressed are solely my own and not influenced in any way. This page contains affiliate links/codes which aids in funding future reviews.