Soap and water here, dried with a regular old towel. Never use paper, and I never use any “fabric softener” (which is just soap) on my towels. The last time I bought glasses from an independent optician, he told me that is the method he used, and that is good enough for me. Mine are uncoated though. I can’t recall the number of times my glasses have saved my eyes from flying debris - metal shavings, wood chips - and they get scratched from that. I was offered free Lasik and turned it down. I like wearing eye protection every waking hour.
I just hold them under very hot running water in the bathroom, usually after I’ve used hairspray and brushed my teeth. Hairspray (yes, I’m an 80s child) seems to get on my glasses something fierce. I use a very soft old towel to dry because I don’t want scratches.
You’re supposed to clean them? Well, that explains a lot.
Rinse 'em under the tap, leave to dry off and shove 'em back with the other glassware.
…Oh you meant spectacles sorry 
Okay, this is weird, but am I the only person with such disgustingly oily skin that cleaning the nose-piece is more important than the lens itself? I mean, I can kind of look around a big streak, but if they keep sliding down my nose from the built-up oil, I can’t see at all.
So I run them under hot water, soaping the nose pieces and sometimes the ear pieces (yeah, my skin is oily), and then sometimes I remember to wipe off the lenses. Dish soap works well, and I dry them with an ordinary soft towel.
Home-made Windex substitute (ask me for recipe) and paper towels. Haven’t scratched any lenses in 10 years and the home-make Windex doesn’t leave blue dye in the cracks like the expensive branded shit does.
Until this thread I usually kept them on for a bit in the shower in the morning to get them kinda-sorta clean, then retrieved them from the soap dish to dry them on a hand towel. (That or a t-shirt.)
After reading this thread, I found the pair of microfibre towels I hadn’t decided what to do yet, and they’re now my new glasses-cleaning towels, since they really do seem to do an awesome job. Thanks!
I am a photo lab tech, & cleaning lenses is something we do.
I used a 50/50 mix of rubbing alcohol & tapwater.
Microfibres? No. Toilet paper.
I had always heard this too, so when I went to the optician about 10 days ago, I was surprised to see him clean my glasses with kleenex and asked. “Old wives tale”, he replied.
I clean my glasses either with soap and water and dry with a clean handkerchief (I still use them for the usual purpose–I think kleenex is ecologically unsound and dirty besides) or with Windex, which is, I think, the same stuff the optician sells at 10 times the price, also dried with a handkerchief.
Hmmm. I guess I’m the only one who puts them in the dish washer.
Not regularly mind you, maybe once every two months or so but it completely clears out the gunky residue that gets between the nose pieces and the metal clasps.
And yes, I’m serious.
Cool. I wouldn’t want to risk it on my $600 glasses, but that’s kind of awesome that it works. I had something that was literally turning green in there in my last pair. :eek:
I don’t use any chemical cleaner, or even any liquid. I just wipe the lenses with the guitar-polishing cloth I got at the music store. (Mine is the Lizard Spit brand.) The cloth is specifically designed to wipe fingerprints off guitars without scratching the finish, and so it does the same job admirably for my glasses. I recommended it to my roommate and he got his own guitar cloth and has been happy with the results as well.
I’ve found Kleenex to be utterly worthless for dry-wiping my lenses.
I use Flents Wipe- N- Clear wipes which I’ve been buying from Costco for a couple years. I clean my glasses about once a day and have a box at the office and a box at home.
Also, I always specify CRIZAL lenses. They’re much easier to clean. One time the optician actually talked me out of it saying that I didn’t need to pay the extra for them. Well, I regretted it beause the non- CRIZAL lenses were hard to clean - they seem to have a film that just smeared around even with Wipe-N-Clears. I find that the CRIZAL lenses don’t scratch as readily either.
Plastic lenses, soap & water only, lint free cotton dried without softener, so far so good.
Okeedokee. So I guess I will delurk here and give you the answer from the horses mouth. I am a licensed optician with a major supplier in the US. I sell you and make your glasses. ( I also deal with contact lenses) I once did an “Ask the Optician” thread yonks ago if you are more curious.
The best method to clean your eyeglass lenses regardless of the material is dish soap and warm water, with a soft cotton cloth to dry. I prefer to use an old dish towel that has no more fuzzies left to it anymore. An acceptable alternative is a microfiber cloth. The only catch to this is you need to make sure that you do not have any fabric softener on the cloth. It won’t hurt your glasses, but it will smear up anti-reflective lenses something fierce. I recommend to all my patients to wash their whole pair of glasses with dish soap and warm water at least once a week, more if they work in chemical, dusty, or greasy environments. If you have ever had anti-reflective lenses that never seemed to get clean this is your problem. If you don’t wash the frames too, the collected face oils are trapped between the frame and the lens or on the nose pads. Every time you bump that area while drying you just smear the face grease back across the lens.
If soap and water are inconvenient, use an alcohol based eyeglass cleaner with a soft cloth. Avoid paper products to dry your lenses, while here and there won’t hurt them, regular use will lead to scratching. The way most people clean their glasses, by rubbing them with a shirt corner without rinsing the dust off first is what leads plastic lenses to scratch. Don’t do that. We can tell. Even when you swear up and down that you haven’t. The way the lenses get scratched gives it away.
Get the anti-reflective coating, it really does help. The Crizal coating is one of the best, but there are a few more AR coatings out there with the oleophobic coating that Crizal has which leads to the ease of cleaning them.
Get something like paint on your lenses? Plain rubbing alcohol will take it off without damaging the coating, though if you use alcohol regularly for that you will strip the oleophobic coat off your nifty Crizal lenses.
Those Handi-Wipe style lens cleaners are neat, but I don’t like them. They are not wet enough to rinse the dust from the lens, leading to scratching with regular use, but if you rinse them with water first, they are grand.
Ixnay on the dishwasher-tay. The soap is too caustic and it gets too hot, it will warp the lenses and the frames. Dish soap and warm water is the ticket. If you get that green gunk, (called Face Cheese in the biz ) just trot down to your local optical chain to get the nose pads replaced. Most places will not charge for small repairs like that.
Yes, you should not have to pay a bajillion dollars for eyeglasses. There are several Brick and Mortar places that will leave your wallet screaming, places with names that sound like Lenscrackers, but we aren’t all bad. What you get from us is our experience with fit and precision. If you have a complex Rx come to us. We can help you get glasses that look thin and fabulous without spending more than you want. Talk to your optician, tell them what you want and what you want to spend, if they recommend different frame shapes and sizes and tell you WHY you might want a pricer lens and explain it without just some bullpoop value statements they probably know what they are doing. If they can’t come up with reasons why one might be better than the other without dithering about just “thickness” they are just trying to get you to spend more money.
There are a few other rules to follow to get the most bang for your buck but I won’t hijack this thread any further. 
~Aqua
Lead Optician, ABO, NCLE
Oh no you don’t, bucko. Get yer squinty-eyed self back in here and pass on the good stuff or I’ll see to it (har!) that some bad thoughts are directed at your cat.
Excellent post.
As the OP of this thread I hereby waive any protection this thread may have had from any hijacks. Henceforth, hijacks are freely permitted.
Now out with the goods before I join Chefguy in his thought experiment.
One thought about using kleenex to dry your glasses - my prescription changes so fast that my lenses are never around long enough to get scratched by the kleenex. If you don’t need a new prescription every two years like I do, it is a bigger concern.
The drying part is fairly conentional. After making sure there are no particles remaining on the lenses that could scratch them, I dry them using cut up white cotton underwear (hi, Napier!). I keep a hanky-sized square in the case to have handy for cleaning, where it also serves to keep the specs from rattling around as they’re too small for the case.
As for the “wet” part, when I’m out on the dusty trail I use the gecko method (warning, TMI): …I carefully swipe the lenses clean with my tongue. This presupposes that there nothing especially grody on the glass or abrasive in my mouth.
The next time I clean my eyeglasses at home I’ll try the rubbing alcohol/water mix suggested by Bosda. And underwear of course.
I like to use the rubbing alcohol to get off things like hairspray. It really works wonders, really on everything!