Cleaning My Glorious 3XL Mousepad For The First Time in 5 Years!

# background I got this Glorious 3XL Mousepad a month or so after building my first pc. https://forum.level1techs.com/t/first-build-complete/105495?u=bedhedd

Since that time it has gotten quite dusty. I have never had a free afternoon or opportunity to clean it in a bathtub.

first try

I followed Rocket Jump Ninja’s guide. In this first attempt, I didn’t soak it as long nor did I use a sponge.

However, I did use a little bit of liquid laundry ditergent


Then I took it out to see how much dust came out. The water from my apartment is a little murky.

I emptied the tub and refilled it with water

This was after the second pass

I hung it up to dry


Unfortunately, I underestimated the weight and the shower rod fell. This was my adjustment

The center and top of the mousepad washed well, but I think I needed to soak the bottom more. The dirtyness makes sense as I hadn’t washed this in years

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round 2 results

methodology changes

soaking it overnight

I decided to give the cleaning another shot as I felt I hadn’t soaked it long enough. To keep the pad from floating, I used soap bottles to hold it down.

scrubbing it with a sponge

After waiting overnight, I emptied the tub then refilled it. I tried scrubbing with a sponge, but it’s really hard to tell if I got the dust when the pad is wet.

laundry detergent

Since I already had it in the tub, I gave it another 2 cycles of ditergent and sponge scrubbing. During the first cycle, I used a mixture of liquid laundry detergent and water. On the second cycle, I decided to apply the detergent directly on to the areas that I had the most contact with.

results and lessons learned

before

after

lessons

  1. The center and left section cleaned a lot more this run compared to the previous.
    A. If I do another run, I’d probably want to focus on the right side more.
  2. It’s a lot easier to submerge the pad by having the pad in the tub as the water fills
    A. Compared to filling the tub and trying to use water weight to submerge it
  3. Don’t let the pad soak in detergent too long
    A. black particles came off. Not sure if it’s rubber or dust
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To clean my mouse pads I’ve always used something like Cif Cream and an old toothbrush to get all the residues out of the fibers of the fabric.
Maybe with a bigger but still soft-ish brush you’re gonna get the job done quick after soaking it overnight.

If you try my method I strongly advice you not to go hard with the scrubbing because you might break the glue between the surface and the bottom rubber pad. Also don’t try to squeeze out the residue water like it’s a towel, it’s gonna mess it up for good (ask me how I know that).

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So a normal washing machine for clothes is not recommended?

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Linus Tech said once on WAN show that he does not recommend it, but he put his LTT desk mat in the washing machine and it is fine.

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I’ve honestly never tried… But that was the first thing that came to my mind. Works great for my sneakers :+1:

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Last time I did that, the entire outer tread separated from the rest of the shoe … RIP those shoes.

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You can destroy the coating, destroy the fabric, i do it because before i was a HARD mouse pad user that needs to be replaced, because you legit wear it out (remember those?).

Cleaning with baby shampoo and water legit makes it last forever, i put my cloth mouse pad in the washing machine because i don’t play FPS games seriously anymore, so i dont care that much about the surface being that consistent if i did i would replace it after the second washing, maybe the first one.

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