Along those lines (and I once mentioned it here), I find the best oil base (enamel) paint brush cleaner is:
After you're finished painting, add a small drip of salad oil and a squirt of ordinary liquid dish soap directly onto the brush, and work it in well.
Then rinse with water. Repeat a second time, sling off excess water, shape and let dry. The bristles stay nice and pliable, and the brush is truly clean. The cost is nil, and you always have the ingredients on hand.
You don't need brush cleaner, paint thinner, turpentine, mineral spirits, etc. all of which nowadays are very expensive, are themselves difficult to dispose of, are toxic, have high VOCs, are environmentally unsound, and usually sit in a tin can until spilled or evaporated. Worse still are the brushes (some of us
) forget and leave in the cans, which end up with a clotted mess on the ends, loose bristles, and are never quite clean anyway.
I don't know how many thousands of re-usable brushes I've thrown away in my lifetime or gallons of paint thinner paid for and evaporated before I realized that oil paint can be thinned by tiny amount of salad oil, and dish soap emulsifies that combination (it doesn't by itself work on modern enamels, you need the salad oil as an intermediate). But since then I've saved both money, time and aggravation, and I have long lasting re-usable brushes when I need them.
btw if you get a drop of paint on your shirt, you can prevent the spot, by applying a drop of salad oil first, rubbing it into the cloth, and than adding dish soap to the mix. Launder as usual, and the paint will disappear. This doesn't work if the paint has dried, obviously. However if you catch it in time, the oil/soap combination will prevent it from drying, and you don't have to launder right away.
If you try to treat a spot of paint with paint thinner, it merely spreads the stain in to the fabric. Oil and dish soap is a far superior treatment.
