RE: Hiya! Cricket, here!
I think that cleaning your face just before bed is dependent on how oily your skin is. My skin is apparently pretty dry so I no longer clean my face just prior to going to bed. I also do not wash my mask cushions with soap. I clean them with Pampers baby wipes. Seems to keep the cushions in good shape longer. Like I said my facial skin seems to be quite non-oily. We have at least one person on the board whose skin is so oily that he has to get up in the middle of the night and rewash his face and cushions or he gets much worse leaks for the second half of the night. As you can see there is a wide range of cleaning requirement. The best thing to do initially is to start out on the side of caution and wash face and cushions daily. Then after a while you can experiment with backing off.
I got away from washing my mask daily very quickly mostly because my Mirage Quattro mask has about a zillion pieces so the disassembly and assembly takes a while. Keeping track of the small pieces is a pain.
Anyway that is my take on it.
Best Regards,
PaytonA