How to Clean Cricut Cutting Mats - It's Easier Than You Think!

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Learn how you can clean Cricut cutting mats and get more mileage before you need to replace them. It’s easier than you might think!

As much as I love my Cricut, I also realize that it’s not a cheap hobby! Between the tools, the materials, and the accessories, costs can really add up. One area where you can save money is by cleaning your Cricut cutting mats.

Over time, the cutting mats get dirty. Leftover material, dust, and various junk will stick to the adhesive surface. It’s not only gross but the more stuff you have on the mat, the less sticky it will become.

I’ll be honest, when I first started out with my Cricut I thought you just needed to pitch a dirty mat and buy new ones. My mind was a little blown when I learned how easy it is to clean Cricut cutting mats.

Keep in mind, this method won’t make cutting mats last forever, but it will allow you to use them a lot longer before they need to be replaced.

Materials Needed to Clean Cricut Cutting Mats

LA’s Totally Awesome All-Purpose Cleaner – available at the Dollar Tree (or another type of cleaning product – read on for more info!)
A scraper tool, credit card, or some other object you can use to scrape the mat
Paper towels
A dirty Cricut cutting mat 🙂

The number one product that’s recommended for cleaning cutting mats is a product available at Dollar Tree for the low, low, price of one dollar. It’s called LA’s Totally Awesome All-Purpose Cleaner and you’ll find it in the cleaning section of Dollar Tree.

I had a mat that was pretty disgusting after an experiment with cutting leather. I’ve learned a much better way to do this now which I’ll be sharing in an upcoming post!

How to clean a Cricut cutting mat is very easy – simply spray the mat with the Totally Awesome cleaner and let it sit for a few minutes.

Once it’s sat for a minute or two, scrape the mat with your tool, starting at the top and working your way down, scraping in the same direction. I had an old scraper tool that I used but you could also use an old credit card or something like that.

Use the paper towel to wipe off the scraper as you go if it’s nasty like mine was below…yuck. Once you’ve scraped the entire mat, again use paper towels to wipe off the scrapings and any extra wet spots.

Let the mat fully dry for 15 minutes or so. If it wasn’t that sticky before you cleaned it, you’ll notice that it’s sticky again once it’s dried! Like magic! The image on the left shows what my cutting mat looked like when I started and the image on the right is how it looked after I cleaned it. Amazing!

Other Products You Can Use

As I was cleaning my mats, I wondered what someone could use if they didn’t have a Dollar Tree near them? Was there something special about LA’s Totally Awesome that wasn’t found in other products?

I’m not a chemist by any stretch of the imagination, but I did notice that the Totally Awesome bottle claimed it was a degreaser. I had a bottle of Method degreaser and a really old mat so I decided to give it a shot to see if it worked as well.

And surprise! It did! It became just as sticky once it dried as the mats I used the Totally Awesome cleaner on.

So if you don’t have a Dollar Tree or already have a degreaser on hand, you can absolutely use that to clean Cricut cutting mats and get the same effect.

If you were thinking about throwing your cutting mats out, try this method instead and save yourself some money!