How to Clean Cricut Mat？

There are always moments for our craft enthusiasts to be bewildered by the dirty and nonstick Cricut cutting mat. As time goes by, we will realize that it’s crucial to regularly clean our cutting mats, or things may go awry during the creative activities. For instance, a material may be pushed out of position while cutting and curling up during weeding.

Even though cleaning Cricut mat sounds not that easy to achieve, you will immediately get into groove once you learn about how to clean a Cricut mat with this tutorial.

If you’re new to the self-healing cutting mat, don’t fret, you can get the critical information here about what a cutting mat is, how to clean Cricut mat, and how often you should clean your Cricut mat.

What is a cutting mat?

A self-healing cutting mat is a mat with adhesive in diverse levels, which is for holding different materials in place and going through a smooth cut. Typically, you set materials on the cutting mat, feed them together into a cutting machine, and allow the pattern cut to begin.

Check cutting mats on the internet. You’re able to find a bunch of tacks they feature. There are primarily four kinds of cutting mats: light grip, standard or medium grip, strong grip, and fabric grip.

Usually, each type of cutting mat is for different materials.
1. Light grip is for lightweight materials, such as standard paper, light card stock, vellum, printer paper, and more.
2. Standard grip is for medium-weight materials like heavy card stock, patterned paper, permanent vinyl, iron-on, pearl paper, and heat transfer vinyl.
3. Strong grip is for heavy-duty materials, including specialty card stock, poster board, chipboard, mat board, and backed fabric.
4. And fabric grip is like what its name says for most fabrics like cotton, denim, felt canvas, polyester, silk, flannel, linen, and more.

The fabric-grip one always combines with a special adhesive compared to the other three types. Therefore, when we get started with how to clean Cricut mats, we have to be careful about dealing with the fabric-grip cutting mat.

How to clean Cricut mat？

For cleaning Cricut mat with regular adhesive, we have several methods. Before you dive into this activity, prepare the following items in advance.
1. A Scraper
2. Warm soapy water
3. A Hard-bristled Brush
4. Tweezers
5. Alcohol-free Baby Wipes
6. A Lint Roller

First, if the leftover scraps are large and quite a lot, you can use a scraper or sturdy card to scrap off the debris on the cutting mat. Remember to use the scraper with gentle pressure. You don’t want to damage the stickiness for further use.

Sometimes you may find the cutting mats full of stray hairs and fuzzy stuff. Use the help from a lint roller. The sticky surface will definitely help you get rid of some leftovers like glitter, small pieces of vinyl and paper, etc.

Wherever the debris combines with some strings tangling together, you can wipe them off by making use of wet wipes or alcohol-free baby wipes (the latter always works better when handling stuck lines). The moisture feature can effectively reduce stickiness.

Suppose that there are lots of dirty, sticky residues left on the cutting mat. You may need to apply some warm soapy water and dish soap. Spray some on the cutting mat, and scrub gently with a hard-bristled brush or clean the dishcloth in a circular motion until you tidy up the whole mat. This method can help you get away from dark marks and dots that are really hard to eliminate on the edge of the cutting mat.

As for fabric-grip cutting mats, since the special adhesive is more delicate than the regular one, you better not use a scraper but choose tweezers instead to remove some big pieces of excess materials. And if there are some fuzzy leftovers caused by the fabric material, you can also apply the lint roller to clean the cutting mat, which is much milder than the scratching method and other harsh soap cleaners.

Attention here! You must let the processed cutting mat air dry and not use any heat or high-temperature kinds of stuff, or the adhesive will get ruined and cannot work as expected.

Also, when you dry the cutting mat, you may need to hang it vertically on a dry rack or place it flatly on a dry area to avoid warp.

How often should you clean your Cricut mat?

For an experienced crafter who makes handicrafts with a cutting mat almost every day, it’s for sure that you need to clean much more frequently than others to keep your cutting mats at work, like once or twice a week.

As for others, just keep in mind that you need to clean your cutting mats as long as they get dirty or have little extras.