How To Clean Foam Earbuds (Step-By-Step)

Earbuds are devices that accompany us in most situations these days.

They are always there for us when we need them, be it on a boring day at work, playing video games, running some errands, working, or even when we are stressed.

So they take “care” of us, right? We should take care of them too.

What I mean by this is that we should regularly clean memory foam earbuds, especially their foam ear tips.

Dirty earbuds will give us bad sound quality and we will miss some tones. They won’t sound the same as when we first bought them.

What’s even worse, it can cause ear problems like itchy ears and ear infections.

In today’s blog, I will show you how to “take care” of your earbuds, or how to clean the earbud foam.

Without wasting time further, let’s get right to the point.

Cleaning the Earbuds Memory Foam Tips

There are a few ways that you can clean your memory foam earbuds, I will try to explain the easiest and most basic way.

Just don’t go too far to immerse them in water or something like that you don’t want to mess them up to the point just to throw them in the bin.

Please be aware that only earplugs made of foam or similar materials should be cleaned. You shouldn’t try to clean disposable ones because they are often composed of silicone putty or soft wax. So yeah cleaning traditional silicone ear tips is not a good idea.

Grab a Bowl Of Warm Water

First thing first make sure you get a small bowl of warm water, it should be warm water for obvious reasons.

Putting some cleaning detergent on it or even soap will do, but most audiologists recommend putting hydrogen peroxide on it since it is the most effective option, as I said if you don’t have it a soap will do just fine.

You should then just leave them there to soak in the warm water for a short period of time.

This makes it much simpler to remove the earwax and any other filth by helping to loosen them up.

Start Rinsing and Cleaning

Once you have left them for a good period of time in the warm water, it’s time to pick up the off and rinse them since the warm water can remove so much dirt.

Note that if the water is too hot and you leave them for a long time, it might damage the memory foam tip a bit.

Anyway, you can start removing the dirt that is left by scrubbing it. Feel free to do it by hand, but I think using a toothbrush that you don’t need will be a better choice since it will do more than a hand.

The most important thing is to make sure the dirt is completely removed from your earplugs without causing any harm.

If you need to do this gently and without using excessive force, the dirt will fall off anyway due to the warm water effect.

Drying and Polishing

So we pretty much came to the end of the cleaning process. Yes, it is as simple as that, just like you would clean anything in general.

Once you have them completely washed and clean, you can start by gently rinsing or polishing them. Just make sure you remove the soap or whatever detergent you used.

Once they are dry, you are good to go. Please do not use a hair dryer to dry them, just let them dry in a neutral manner. You might accidentally damage the foam with the heat from the hair dryer.

There is one thing I would highly recommend you do, and that is disinfection.

You can try using some alcohol to disinfect your earbuds since it will prevent any build-up of bacteria, and it will hugely help in avoiding ear infections and such things.

You can spray them a bit with some alcohol, or even an after-shaver will do just fine.

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Important Information About Foam Earbuds

Before I let you go, I would like to touch down and tell you that I tried my best to tell you the most basic and simpler way to clean your foam earbuds. There are different people that follow different routes, and yes, more complicated ones.

I’ve seen people making homemade cleaning slimes, using different detergents, and so on, but I feel those things can be a bit overkill just for the foam of your earbuds.

No offense to anyone, but I don’t see why one should go so far when cleaning their earbuds foam. You just need the disinfection and dirt off part.

Cleaning your earbuds is more important than you might think. They will benefit you in many ways.

Not only will they look good and the other people won’t be like “ewww”, but they will also contribute to the health of your ears.

Cleaning your earbuds on a regular basis will help keep bacteria and microorganisms out of your ears while also extending the life of the earbuds themselves.

Another reason would be that if you give them to others, particularly your children, you should regularly clean them.

Make sure to immediately clean your earbuds after someone uses them for a while if you are prone to ear infections or other problems because bacteria can spread easily from one person to another.

Something that I realized myself was that with proper cleaning, or let’s just say, taking care of earbuds, even a cheap pair will last you more than it should.

As I mentioned at the start, a dirty earbud can also sound bad, and even worse, it can result in the inside components getting damaged.

But when you think of it, it matters less if your earbuds get broken or damaged. Our priority should be for our ears to not get damaged.

So yeah, most importantly is that we take care of our ears with the cleaning process.

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Final Words

We pretty much arrived at the end of the blog, hopefully, I was crystal clear and you got the whole point of this article.

It is easy to clean them, but the reason why we should is the most important one.

Until next time, Enjoy!

Further Reading

Let’s talk a little bit about the speakers which are more useful than earbuds these days. We have a comparison between Edifier R1280T vs R1280DB and Klipsch RP 160M vs RP 600M. 

As another option or possibility, there are bookshelf speakers for the garage and  speakers for outdoor projectors. Don’t miss out if you own Audio Technica LP120 these speakers, are definitely meant for you.