Cleaning my Snow Miku Mousepad

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale! Hot off one cleaning project, I decided to take the time to carry out a little cleaning project of my own for my own desktop. Earlier in the year, I upgraded my system to an entirely new build with the only two components being carried over from the previous build being my mouse and its mouse pad. Both had served me well over the past year and I had seen no reason to change them especially since I have gotten very use to their feel and performance.

Unlike most knock off printed mouse pads sold online with anime or game designs, this particular mouse pad is actually a proper licensed Snow Miku merchandise. Made in collaboration with gaming peripherals maker, Thermaltake, the mouse pad is a custom Snow Miku themed mouse pad from their Dasher Extended series. I am neither the biggest fan of Snow Miku nor Thermaltake's products but, the combination of the two had me more than sufficiently intrigued to get it.

Initial impressions of Thermaltake's Dasher mousepad turned out to be much better than I had expected. The surface felt good, the edge weave was thick and the thickness of the mousepad was just right. Hundreds if not, thousands of hours later, I found myself completely accustomed to the pad and not wanting to change. Of course, all those hours of use do eventually bring up a crop of long-term use issues. The most obvious of them being staining.

Because of the light color of the mouse pad, the stains were even more apparent even when viewed from afar. The most obvious spots were exactly where my left and right wrists would rest. In this case, the left spots were right over where my left wrist would rest over the keyboard's WASD keys. While the right spot was a little wider encompassing for the sweeping wrist movements made.

I have gone through many mouse pads in the past, both cheap and expensive. All of them were dark colored and only got as much as periodic microfiber cloth wipes to clean it. This was the first time I was setting out to actually do a proper clean of the entire 900 x 400 mm surface of this pad. I tried looking up some advice online but, as one would expect, there was no clear consensus. What I ended up doing was using diluted clothing detergent and applying it over the surface of the pad with out soaking it. A toothbrush was used to scrub on the stained areas with the aid of a little more detergent. 

After that, I did a quick scrub of the entire cloth surface of the pad with hand soap which would, hopefully, be milder and leave a pleasant scent. Then, a quick rinse with warm water to wash up off any remaining suds and soap.

With washing complete, I placed the mat out to dry on a clothing rack. Fortunately, the weather was pretty fair and would ensure the pad gets dried evenly. A closer inspection at all of the spots with the worst stains and there were none to be seen.

Success! Not only had I managed to remove the stains, the entire surface of the pad now looked more reinvigorated. The light blue colors now appeared more vibrant and defined. I was worried the surface may have become inconsistent or the edges may start to curl. Fortunately, none of that happened.

After several hours of drying, the mat was now clean, dry and ready for use again. There were no signs of any damage and, if anything, the pad actually felt better to use now that it was before. As a bonus, it even smelt pretty good now too! So there you have it, if you ever need to clean your mousepad in the future, hopefully this guide will be helpful. If you have any questions about the process, do not hesitate to ask me in the comments section below. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!