10 Unexpected Yet Brilliant Ways To Repurpose Your Old Hair Brushes Around The House

As much as we'd all like them to, hair brushes don't last forever. Even that really pricey one you bought at the salon along with all those products you never use (Go on, tell us we're wrong) eventually wears out. Thankfully, there's a surprisingly voluminous array of ways to repurpose old hair brushes around your home. We're talking DIYing a hand mirror, making a cat self-groomer, or fluffing up yarn for crochet projects. You can even affix old hair brushes to things like dust pans to remove the grime picked up by brooms. 

However you plan to repurpose your old hair brush, you need to make sure it's sparkling clean and sanitized. It was, after all, used on your sometimes not so clean hair for (probably) a long time. First, use a comb to remove any hair. Then, to prepare it for upcoming projects, refresh your grimy hairbrush with an all-natural kitchen ingredient: vinegar. Mix together distilled white vinegar and tepid water in a 1:1 ratio in a bowl big enough to completely submerge the brush. Leave the brushes in the solution for up to 30 minutes. Other hair brush cleaning methods include water and tea tree oil or water and soap. Scrub with a toothbrush to remove dead skin cells and build-up from scalp oils, then start repurposing it around the home.

Crocheted items are typically pretty neat and sleek — it's the nature of pulling yarn through loops. Sometimes, however, you want things to look floofy — think squirrel tails, newborn chicks, and Studio Ghibli soot sprites. Here's where a hair brush comes in handy. Leave some strands of yarn long and free from the confines of tight crochet stitches. Grab an old hair brush and start brushing their lengths vigorously, à la the puffy hairstyles of the 1980s. It takes a while, about 15 or so minutes, but eventually you'll have all the fluff you need.

You want to hang a photo or small painting, but you don't have a hammer handy. If so, getting that hook into the wall could be tricky — but not so if you're creative. Hold a hair brush by its handle, turned so the bristles face you. Then, hold the picture hook in your other hand, and use the back of the brush to hammer it into the wall. So long as the hair brush is made from strong plastic or even wood, it should be strong enough. While this isn't the ideal long term solution, it will work in a pinch.

Florist-grade flower frogs, used for bouquet arrangements and ikebana, are relatively expensive for what they are. The plaster, plastic, or ceramic discs are fitted with tightly-bunched brass pins and come in various sizes to fit an array of vases and vessels. Save yourself some money by sawing or snapping the handle off your old hair brush and placing it in the middle of a bowl or dish. Push the stems into the bristles to hold them upright, then decorate your home with the flowers. This works best with brushes that have tightly-clustered bristles.

You love your kitties, but you're tired of them shedding fur all over your soft furnishings. An old hair brush is the answer to your cat-wool woes. The easiest option is to attach an old brush to a table leg, bedpost, or wall at cat body height with the bristles facing outwards. Zip ties work well for this purpose, as do heavy-duty 3M Command strips. All going well, your fur child will rub against the brush, collecting shed fur before it can land on your sofa.

Are you into acrylic pour? You've probably already tried running a comb through freshly-poured paint in different hues to color blend patterns. Just imagine what patterns the bristles of an old hair brush would create! Printmakers can use hair brushes as decorative tools, too. Apply paint directly onto the head and bristles of the brush and run it down a gel plate. Press a clean sheet of paper onto the plate, carefully removing it once the paint has adhered to the paper. Repeat with other colors to create a layered piece of artwork to display in your home.

If you have a small round hairbrush with plastic bristles (like the Compact Brush with Mirror at Dollar Tree), you may be able to turn it into a fidget pop-it toy. To do this, you'll carefully pull out the bristles and discard them. Then, the section that held the bristles can be popped in and out, providing you with a toy to play with to help you focus or calm anxious thoughts. This is an easy way to make an old hairbrush functional again.

Ideally, the brush you use for this DIY is round and relatively flat with no long handle and tightly-spaced bristles. First, you'll need to make sure the back of the brush sits flush with your tabletop. Do this by gluing a flat item like water bottle caps to the backside. Then, simply take your note and pop it between the bristles so it's standing upright and facing you. This would also work for photos, business cards, recipe cards ... Anything flat you want to read at a glance.

If the bristles of your hair brush are embedded into a spongy pad, the pad can likely be removed from its plastic or wood casing pretty easily. Try it with your old brush, and if you see success, you can turn it into a hand mirror. Pop a mirror into the space the pad once fitted into. If it wiggles around, cut some cardboard to fit the empty space or extend the frame with air dry clay. You can also paint the frame, if desired. Once dry, glue the mirror into place and add any other decorative embellishments.

Texturing a wall will add much-needed personality to a bland aesthetic. Buying roller attachments ups your renovation budget. Instead, take that old paintbrush (this works especially well with the brushes you hold at the back of the head rather than by the long handle) and run it over the wall. Create circles, squiggles, or rainbows ... Don't be afraid to get creative with the patterns, so long as they repeat. Using an old hairbrush as a texture tool is also one of the many savvy ways to make a plaster wall effect in your home.

Struggle to get strands of human or pet hair off your broom after sweeping? This idea is for you! Take a plastic hair brush with sturdy, open bristles and snap or cut off the handle. Squeeze a line of glue onto the top of your dust pan using a hot glue gun. Turn the hair brush on its side so the bristles are horizontal rather than vertical and facing away from the dust pan handle. Press the brush firmly onto the glue. Run the broom bristles over the brush to remove tangles.