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Start - Cleaning
The Queen of Clean's Advice on Cleaning your Classic LickiMat®
Now that you have your Lickimat, you want to look after it so that it will last a long time. LickiMat® is made from TPR (Thermoplastic Elastomer). The great thing about this material is that it is better at tear resistance than silicone. It is also food safe and is recyclable.The main question we get is how to clean a Classic LickiMat®. Technically they can go in the dishwasher, but we advised against it. Unless you can lay it perfectly flat on the rack, it will warp. It won't destroy the mat, but may bend it.
If you want a fully dishwasher safe LickiMat® then I suggest you choose a LickiMat® TUFF™. Because they have a rigid base, they do not warp in the dishwasher.
So we suggest hand wash only, like doing the dishes. If your dog is like mine, you'll find most of the mat surface is pretty clean anyway, except the areas where the food is still trapped. Sorry for the bits of stuck food, but your dog loves it and it was designed that way.
Your LickiMat® may have been sitting on the floor all day, and the food bits that your dog couldn't get out are now stuck dry. To make life a bit easier before attempting to clean, lay the mat in the sink and run warm water over it with a few drops of washing up liquid. Leave it to soak for about 15 minutes.
Three washing up brushes bought from Kmart Australia
Don't waste your time using a scrub pad or cloth to wash these. Nip down to your local shop and get a washing up brush. I bought these three from Kmart in Australia. They've all got medium to soft bristles. You don't want to be using a hard brush as it might damage your LickiMat®.
The first brush has silicone bristles and the middle one is nylon. The last one, that looks like a mini toilet brush, is in fact a small bottle brush with very soft silicone bristles. They all work well cleaning the mats, but I have chosen the best performer for each style LickiMat®.
My brushing technique was to work up and down the surface, then left to right, then circular movements across the whole surface. That got most of the bits off, but I still had to go over certain areas. It only took about 2 minutes to clean each thoroughly.
Silicone bristle brush best when cleaning Lickimat Buddy
The silicone brush I preferred for LickiMat® Buddy™. It got into the corners well and cleaned all the leftover meaty dog food out in almost one go. I tried the other two brushes on the LickiMat® as well and found that I quite liked the blue nylon bristle one too. Having to choose just one for each LickiMat®, I think this was a bit better.
Nylon bristles worked best on LickiMat® Playdate™
The nylon brush has longer nylon bristles and is a bit more flexible than the other two brushes. So I thought I'd give it a go on LickiMat® Playdate™, because it has so many more trapping corners. It cleaned it beautifully leaving almost nothing behind. I rinsed the rest of the yoghurt traces off under the tap. I gave the silicone one a go on this mat too and found it worked pretty well. But I thought this one was just a little bit better.
The silicone bottle brush worked best on LickiMat® Soother™
The LickiMat® Soother™ I thought would be quite hard to clean. So I chose to use the silicone bottle brush, as I thought it would work best passing through the gaps between the teeth. The LickiMat® had dried hazelnut banana milkshake on from two days ago. Surprisingly it cleaned the little annoying bits of nuts off really easily. I tried all three brushes and felt that the nylon one worked well too. The silicone gripped on to the teeth too much and wasn't good for this design at all.
After cleaning, rinse well, shake off excess water and lie flat face up to dry. When not in use, leave some where it can lay flat.