How to clean your mousepad might seem like a dumb topic to cover, but I promise it will save at least a few people from some severe pain. If you are anything like me, you try to keep your mousepad pristine. Unfortunately, that is almost impossible to do. During the current lockdown, I am spending a lot more time at my desk, and my XXL mousepad is hurting. As I am about to clean my mousepad, I realized many people would make core mistakes when trying to clean their own.
What Not to Do
It may seem obvious that cleaning your mousepad is as easy as throwing it in the washing machine and calling it a day. It is not.
Washing machines are designed on the principle of agitation. The machine has to aggressively move the contents around to make sure they are all sufficiently washed. This agitation threatens to rip apart your mousepad before it even gets to the rinse cycle.
If I had a dollar for everything that a washing machine has done damage to, I could buy new versions of a few of those items. The mousepad is inherently more prone to damage because it is not resilient cloth; it is also rubber. Rubber can tear or crumble if abused.
You may be thinking, “Well, then it’s fine to soak in some bleach instead!”. NO!
Again, most mousepads are made of cloth and rubber. Do you know what is never a good idea? Using chemicals that may degrade the material that mostly makes up the product you are trying to clean.
The last big no-no is using the dryer. If intense agitation and chemicals will ruin your mousepad, what do you think high heat is going to do?
“But Dan, what if I put it on low”?
No.
What to Do
We spent a lot of time in an article focused on how to wash your mousepad discussing how not to wash your mousepad. That’s because, frankly, how to wash your mousepad is barely a full-length article.
So here it is, Dan’s magic trick to washing your mousepad: gently wash with warm water and a little dish soap, then air dry.
That’s it, folks. You don’t need special cleaning solvents or special tools. Gently wash that sucker with some soap and water.
In general, when cleaning your gaming equipment, you should follow the mantra of “simple is better”. I have spent a lot of time cleaning up used gaming systems and accessories in my life. Trust me. The fancier you try to get with your cleaning, the more likely you are to cause damage.
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