Margen
You have a cotton bud in your hand and the feeling that you are doing something useful. The proof looks obvious: wax comes out stuck to the cotton. What you cannot see is the part that does not come out.
The ear canal is not a dirty tube that needs scrubbing. It is a conveyor belt. The skin lining it grows from the area of the eardrum towards the opening, at a bit more than a hand's breadth a year, carrying outwards the flakes and the wax produced in the outer third of the canal; chewing and talking, which move the jaw against that wall, give it the extra push. At the end of that journey the wax appears by itself at the entrance of the ear, which is the only place where it needs picking up.
The wax, besides, is doing a job while it travels: it is acidic, it traps dust and fluff, and it keeps the skin of the canal waterproof and supple. A spotless canal is not a healthy canal; it is a canal left out in the open, one that itches and gets irritated.
A cotton bud has the diameter of an adult's canal. That means it does not pick the wax up: it pushes it. The little that stays on the cotton is what was already at the entrance —the wax that was going to come out on its own anyway— and the rest goes to the back, where no conveyor belt applies, because that area no longer migrates. There it compacts against the eardrum and forms the plug that takes you to the clinic.
The clinical practice guideline on cerumen impaction from the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, the international reference on this, expressly recommends against cotton buds or any object inserted into the canal, and also advises against ear candles, which extract nothing and add burns and candle wax to the list of things that have to be removed.
Here is what is worth doing.
If you notice nothing, do nothing. An ear without symptoms needs no cleaning, even if wax can be seen at the entrance: that is the conveyor belt working.
For the outside, the towel after your shower and as far as a finger reaches around the outer ear. Nothing that has to be inserted.
If you wear a hearing aid or sleeping earplugs, the conveyor belt has a harder time of it: the device occupies the canal and slows the exit. That does not change what to do, it changes how often it is worth having your ear looked at, which in that case is once a year even if you notice nothing. From about sixty the same thing happens for another reason: the wax turns drier and travels less well.
If your ear feels blocked, as though you were hearing through cotton wool, or it itches, or it rings, what softens wax is drops: warmed olive oil, water with bicarbonate of soda, or the pharmacy products made for it. Two or three drops in the ear, lying on your side, twice a day for three to five days. Many plugs come away by themselves with that.
If it does not come away, removal is done at the clinic, and there are three ways: the drops themselves, irrigation with water at body temperature, and suction or an instrument under direct vision. Choose the clinic, not the video: a kitchen syringe under pressure can perforate.
Do not irrigate your ear at home, or at a clinic without saying so, if you have had a perforation, if you have grommets, if you have had ear surgery, or if you have diabetes or a weakened immune system: in those cases irrigation is precisely what is not done.
And make an appointment, without waiting to try drops, if it hurts, if there is fluid or blood, if you lose hearing suddenly or if you feel dizzy. That is not a wax plug: it is something else, and it does not wait.
If you have been using drops for three weeks and the ear is still blocked, that is a consultation too. What fixes nothing, this week or the next, is putting the cotton bud back in.
Tomorrow, when you get out of the shower: dry the outer ear with the towel and leave the canal alone. If your ear feels blocked, put the box of cotton buds in the bathroom drawer where you cannot see it, and buy some wax-softening drops at the chemist's.