How to Properly Insert and Remove Contact Lenses

If you wear contact lenses, take good care of them. Contact lenses create many opportunities for germs to get into your eyes if they not handled correctly. It's essential to thoroughly clean contact lenses and to learn to properly insert and remove them to help reduce the risk of injury to your eyes.

Things You'll Need

• Soap
• Water
• Towel
• Contact lens case
• Contact lens solution

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Instructions

Inserting Contacts

• 1

  Wash your hands with soap and water before inserting contact lenses. This will keep bacteria from being transferred onto the contacts.

• 2

  Dry your hands with a clean towel.

• 3

  Rinse the contact lens for your right eye with contact lens solution. If you have the same prescription for both eyes, then you don't have to worry about mixing up the lenses. If you have two different prescriptions, handle either the left or right lens first each time you insert or remove your lenses.

• 4

  Place the right-eye contact on your index finger.

• 5

  Use your other hand to hold up the upper lid and hold down the lower lid of your right eye. This will help keep you from blinking.

• 6

  Look up and place the contact lens on the white part of your eyeball that is beneath the iris.

• 7

  Blink a few times so the contact lens can center itself.

• 8

  Repeat Steps 3 through 7 for the left contact lens.

Removing Contacts

• 9

  Wash your hands with soap and water.

• 10

  Dry your hands with a clean towel.

• 11

  Hold your right eye open with one hand.

• 12

  Look up and use your fingertip to slide your contact down to the white portion of the eyeball below the iris.

• 13

  Very gently squeeze together the edges of your contact lens with your index finger and thumb. Take the contact out, rinse it in contact lens solution, and place it in the right-eye side of the contact lens case. Repeat Steps 1 through 5 with the left-eye contact.