Safe and Effective Ways to Clean Your Eyes, Ears, and Nose: Expert Advice

These small orifices—eyes, ears, and nose—often accumulate unsightly secretions like eye gunk, earwax, and mucus. While tempting to dig them out, improper cleaning can lead to infections. Drawing from advice by ophthalmologists and ENT specialists, here's how to adopt safe hygiene practices.

Eye crusts, earwax, and nasal mucus may disgust us, but aggressive cleaning with the wrong methods can harm delicate tissues. Let's replace bad habits with proven, gentle techniques recommended by medical experts.

How to Clean Your Eyes

Stop doing this: Picking at eye gunk with unwashed hands (especially after touching public surfaces). This can introduce bacteria, leading to conjunctivitis and red, swollen eyes.

Never skip nighttime makeup removal, as it dries out your eyes. Contact lens wearers: Don't exceed expiration dates, sleep in lenses, shower with them, moisten with saliva, or neglect case cleaning—these habits risk serious infections or even vision loss. Your eyes deserve careful handling.

Adopt these habits: Always wash your hands before touching your eyes—for cleaning, makeup, rubbing, or inserting lenses. In the morning, rinse away debris by splashing water on your face.

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In the evening—especially in polluted areas or during allergy season—gently wipe with sterile compresses and single-use 0.9% saline solution. Wipe from the inner corner outward toward the ear in one motion to prevent germ spread and lacrimal sac blockage. Use a fresh compress each time and discard unused saline to maintain sterility.

For makeup removal, use a two-phase cleanser (aqueous and oily) to dissolve mascara, eyeliner, and pencil without irritating tear glands.

Follow lens care instructions precisely. Daily disposables, monthlies, or annuals all build up deposits over time, reducing comfort and tolerance. Clean cases with designated solutions, never tap water.

How to Clean Your Ears

Earwax may look unappealing, but this waxy, yellowish substance is protective: it's bactericidal (inhibiting Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans), waterproofs the canal, and traps dust or insects.

Stop doing this: Probing deeply with cotton swabs, which ENT doctors warn against. This pushes wax deeper, forming plugs, or worse, perforates the eardrum.
Adopt these habits: Clean weekly in the shower with warm water and your pinky finger. If using a swab, insert gently no more than 1 cm. Ear curettes work but require caution.
Blocked ear? Some ears lack natural self-cleaning. See a doctor for safe removal. ENT specialists use tools like forceps, hooks, curettes, suction, and microscopes for stubborn cases. Prevent issues by avoiding water entry and wax compaction from earphones. Ceruminolytics or irrigation can help.

How to Wash Your Nose

Your nose filters, warms, and humidifies air—far superior to any gadget. But mucus and boogers build up inside.

Stop doing this: Using cloth handkerchiefs, which harbor bacteria and viruses. Avoid digging in your nose—it's unhygienic and unnecessary.

Opt for single-use, unscented, uncolored, chlorine-free paper tissues.

Adopt these habits: Use isotonic nasal sprays for daily cleansing or hypertonic for congestion to clear dust, irritants, and pollen.
Dry nose? Humidify indoor air (e.g., with a fan-humidifier). Apply a thin layer of petroleum jelly at the nostrils for a few days to soothe scabs.

Expert sources: Dr. Xavier Subirana, Vice-President, National Union of Ophthalmologists of France (SNOF); Prof. Laurent Kodjikian, President, French Society of Ophthalmology (SFO); Dr. Nils Morel, ENT specialist and President, National Union of ENT and Cervico-Facial Surgery Doctors (SNORL).