Said It Here

Why do paint brushes get ruined in the water bucket?

Leaving paint brushes sitting in a water bucket between jobs destroys the bristles and ruins the brushes for the next paint job. This causes people to go through brushes much faster than they should.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    washing out brushes and putting them back in the original cardboard packaging
  2. 2
    storing them safely

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

Wife paints does not clean them just dumps them in water bucket and basically next paint job they are ruined…source ↗

RidiPwn · r/HomeImprovement · 11 upvotes

i go through brushes faster than i care to admit and my girlfriend does the exact same water bucket thingsource ↗

AbnormalHurricane5 · r/HomeImprovement · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised