Got new glasses in July and for some reason they are really hard to keep clean. Admittedly I have oily skin but it is more than that. Any suggestions on the best way to keep them clean? Thanks.
How often are you washing them? I wash mine every morning, with soap and water and dry with a soft towel.
I use homemade Windex – glass cleaner. 1/8 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup ammonia, water to make one quart in a spray bottle. Works just as well as Windex, but without the blue dye that accumulates in the cracks, and it’s cheaper.
And I use disposable paper towels to dry. They may seem abrasive compared to cloth, but in over 20 years of wiping some of my glasses, there are no discernable scratches, and I can be sure that each time I am starting with a clean surface compared to a recycled rag.
It’s really hard to find a soap that doesn’t have oily moisturizers in it these days. You can try a basic dish liquid.
I’ve always had good luck with the glasses cleaning solution and soft cloth provided to me by the optometrist’s office. It seems to last a good long time. But I only clean my glasses about once a week.
Rubbing alcohol (no glycerin), 50%, tapwater 50%.
91% rubbing alcohol, a little squirt on two spots on my underwear, grab those spots on my finger and thumb, grab the glasses between them, and rub a little. Then advance to dry spots and repeat. Then leave the underwear on my closet shelf to dry, and pull down the pair from yesterday to wear.
It would be a Bad Thing to reverse the glasses-then-wear order.
Be careful in using any sort of cleaner containing ammonia. Certain coatings react badly to this, and will fog up. Before I found out about this I thought I was getting glaucoma because things were getting so fuzzy. Turns out that the Windex I had been using had been gradually fogging up the anti-glare coating. Had to have the coating removed by an optician to salvage the glasses.
I am going to advise strongly AGAINST rubbing alcohol. It can cause stress fractures in your lenses and can compromise your frame, especially if it’s plastic.
Here’s how I clean mine: I lather my hands with Dawn dish detergent, then rub the lenses with my soapy hands. Rinse with warm, NOT HOT water, then dry with a soft cotton cloth, which has NOT been washed or dried with ANY type of fabric softener.
I have been working as a dispensing optician for 22 years. At my office, we use cloth diapers, but at home, I use a Starfiber cloth or clean hand towel.
Fabric softener is little more than wax, and actually makes your clothing “dirty”.
Also, remember that paper (towels, tissues) is made of wood. If you’re going to use paper, you might as well rub them with a stick. Plastic or polycarbonate lenses WILL scratch, and all the scratches will go in the same direction.
Another thing: don’t wipe them with the shirt you’re wearing. As you walk around all day, you pick up little bits of crud in the air, and then grind them into your lenses. Ammonia based cleaners can also erode the surface of the lenses.
I use this little thing called a swipes. It has two pads joined by a v-shaped piece of plastic. It gets my glasses cleaner than anything I have tried.
I find those little microfiber cloths work great to clean my (Transitions coated) lenses, but I’m with the OP - I’d like to clean them less often. It’s become a running gag in our house: timed with a clock while doing nothing more than sitting and watching a movie, I need to wipe my glasses every 15 minutes. They get oily lines on them from my eyelashes, which pick up the oil, I suppose, from the area directly under my eyes (which doesn’t feel or look particularly oily, but the oil must be coming from somewhere). I mean, yay for oily skin and no wrinkles, but boo for my glasses!
Don’t use alcohol or ammonia, both can cause damage to your lenses and/or frames. I was going through new frames frequently until I learned this.
I use shampoo while I’m in the shower. If my glasses get dirty enough to need cleaning sometime later in the day, then I use some dish soap and wipe dry with a bandana or handkerchief (I carry a clean bandana or handkerchief every day).
Usually, I just use a Kleenex, held between my thumb and middle finger, sandwiching the lens of my glasses. If they’re too cruddy for that, I’ll squirt a little bit of Dawn dish soap on my middle finger, wet my middle finger and thumb with warm water, and rub thoroughly with that. Then I dry with something non-linty.
The ‘dry clean’ happens five or six times a day; the ‘wet clean’ happens a couple of times a week.
Loads of great cleaning advice already so I’m going to go in a different direction. Stop touching them. Took me weeks to get this but it was the biggest change for me.
Strange, I have poly lenses that have been cleaned at least twice a day for 10 years, and that would make…lessee, add the 3, carry the 1…over 7000 wipes, and not a scratch, even using a magnifying glass to see it.
So maybe not all paper towels are that bad? I only buy the cheapest anyway. Apparently rubbing with a stick is a pretty good idea.
Another vote for dish soap. Rubbed on with your fingers and rinsed off with water. Dry with something lint free. On a hot day, putting cold glasses back on feels nice to boot.
The best way to keep your glasses clean for a long time is to put them in their case and store the case in your bureau drawer. But that’s not the goal of having glasses, is it? 
I find microfiber cloth work great. I have a 12-year old bottle of “glasses cleaner” that came from the shop and I spritz a bit of that on the microfiber cloth and use it every day for a month. Then the cloth gets washed (and air dried) and then I put another little spritz of cleaner on it. It really, really works well.
I would strongly recommend against this. I would suspect that if you hold your glasses up to a bright light, you’d see hundreds of little very subtle scratches in the lens. Paper products will tear the lenses up.
If that’s not the case, what sort of lenses are you talking about?
Anyway, rinsing with water and wiping with a dry cotton t-shirt works well for me.
One drop of dish washing liquid on each side of each lens. Rub briskly with thumb and forefinger to lather. Rinse off under running water. Shake off the water and put back on.
Every morning I run mine under hot tap water. No soap.
Radio.