Cleaning Your Cutting Machine Mat

I have always struggled with trying to efficiently clean my cutting mats whether it's the Cricut mat or the Silhouette mat.  I NEVER was able to get all the goo off until now!

I re-stick my mats with a chisel Zig Pen and it works great but it is a pain in the butt to get the glue off when I need to clean it and re-stick.  My mats are a huge ugly mess of old glue and grossness.  I tried the soap approach to no avail.  Baby wipes didn't work.  I also tried the Goo Gone or whatever that pungent smelling stuff is.  All it did was give me a headache, stink up the house, and eat up the printed lines on my mat.  Big huge fails!  Today I discovered the answer to cleaning my mats...baby oil!  Seriously.  No joke!!  I just tried it and it took some scrubbing (probably from a years worth of glue stuck on the mat) but it worked!

I put some drops of baby oil on the mat and spread it out by rubbing it into the glue.  I let it sit for a few minutes then added soap and scrubbed with a scrub sponge.  The glue came off!!  I really wasn't expecting that to happen.  I am so happy to have finally found a solution that is cheap and super easy!

I would have taken pictures but my mats were so embarrassingly gross that I couldn't bring myself to post pictures of the before.  Anyway, if you try it let me know if it worked for you!

*UPDATE*

I noticed that the glue definitely came off but then stuck to my scrub sponge.  I had to keep peeling it off.  Also, because I have so many layers of glue on my mat it took some serious effort for me to scrub the glue off.  Not sure how much scrubbing is needed for just one layer.  It took most of the glue out but I'm tired of scrubbing so there's still some on my mat but it's much much cleaner than it was before.