Brush It Off

I'll be the first to admit I'm not always consistent when it comes to cleaning my make-up brushes. To be honest, I usually wipe off my eye shadow brushes on my t-shirt in the morning.
While powder brushes don't need to be cleaned every use your other brushes that contain foundation, concealer and liquid liner brushes do. My foundation brush works better dirty oddly enough, but that's no excuse to not clean it! Instead of a thorough clean every time, I quickly run it under hot water until later.
Every week I do a full clean of all my brushes.
If you have higher end brushes you'll want to be extra careful on how you wash them. Cheap brushes are made of synthetic hair, and premium brushes are real hair mostly made from animals. You also want to be careful not to immerse the tips while cleaning because the glue that holds it together could losen.
Here's the best way I've found to wash them:

I use a gentle soap (This one is Method, but I used to use Softsoap as well) and MAC brush cleaner. I run warm water, wet the brush then use a little amount of soap in my palm. I circle the brush in my palm until the color is too dark, then I rinse. Repeat if needed.

 Once it's clean of all make-up I put the brush on a paper towel and drop some MAC cleaner (mostly alcohol) on it and wipe it both ways a couple times. Leave to dry.

Make sure you set the brush back in it's original position while drying.

Spring Cleaning!

Much like cleaning your house come spring or cleaning out your closet, it's also a good time to go through your make-up and throw out unused or bad items as well.
Mascara should be changed every 3 months. If you have an eye infection at any time, immediately change it then. Once it's exposed to air and your lashes it dries up and collects bacteria. Here's the pro's recommendations:

1. Mascara-3 months if used daily, 6 months if not
2. Concealer-18 months
3. Liquid Foundation-1 year
4. Loose powder foundation-no expiration date
5. Cream eyeshadow-1 year
6. Powder eyeshadow-2 years
7. Lip pencil-3 years
8. Lipstick-2 years
9. Lipgloss-1 year

It's also annoying to have a ton of eyeshadows that you never wear cluttering up your drawer. Also take that time to wipe everything down and organize it. Just remember the clothes rule: if you haven't worn it for a year, you're not going to wear it again--throw it out! That way you now have room to buy NEW colors!! (At least that's my excuse ;)