Proper clay and glaze cleanup is essential to creating a healthy and comfortable pottery studio for everyone. Make it a practice to leave the studio cleaner than you found it. Many hands make light work! Respecting the cleanliness of the shared studio space is essential and required of all attendees. Students must adhere to the following clean-up policies while in attendance and before leaving the studio.

What to use: Please use a cleanup sponge for large messes, then ALWAYS use a clean, damp rag for a final wipedown to remove clay/glaze residue that is left behind by the sponges. Rinsing your sponge/rag multiple times may be required. Disposing clay scraps & water usage instructions are taped above the sink. Please review them thoroughly before using the sink area for cleanup.

Clean-up includes but is not limited to:

- Wheels and wheel area: Top and sides of wheel head, underneath wheel head, splash pans, wheel body, wheel legs), stool surface/legs, center table between wheels, wheel floor.

- Hand-Building areas: Large work tables, stool surfaces/legs, slab roller, work boards.

- Common areas: Large work tables, stools, wedging board, clay rolling cart, glaze bucket area & table, sink surface, faucet, slab roller, floors and any other common areas used during attendance at the studio. Please rinse dirty rags & sponges before returning them!

- Wedging board: Scrape dry or wet clay off using plastic paint scraper, and a final wipe down with a damp cleanup sponge.

- Clay cart: Wipe down surface with damp rag or cleanup sponge to remove clay dust.

- Wooden Wareboards: After taking pottery off boards, they must be thoroughly cleaned with a damp sponge at the sink before returning. 

- Sink: Wipe down surfaces, faucet and handles with a damp rag. 

- Floor: Students are responsible for cleaning up spills or clay (wet or dry) and glaze from the floor. The mop should be used for large messes, or a clean rag hanging above the sink can be used for small messes. A broom can be used to sweep up dry clay scraps from trimming or glazing, but please always sweep in “slow motion” to avoid kicking up clay & glaze dust into the air.

- Recycling Clay: Dried out or leather hard scraps/trimmings that cannot be wedged must be broken into SMALL pieces in clay recycling buckets. Use hammer if needed. Unless noted otherwise, please separate different clay bodies into separate designated buckets to not cross-contaminate the clay bodies, as we do recycle & reuse them. Clay slip or small chunks of clay that are wet can be recycled into the 5-gallon slip bucket near the sink. After pouring the water off into the sink from your throwing bucket, push the remaining wet clay from your throwing bucket through the screen ontop of the 5-gallon slip bucket.

- Recycling/Wedging Clay: Please do not assume it is the responsibility of the Instructor or Studio Monitor to wedge your clay! However, if you have trouble wedging your own clay, please ask your instructor for assistance or further directions. Tossing "messed up" pots should not be a regular practice as this causes alot of clay waste & recycling. However, if you need to recycle wet or dry work that cannot be salvaged, especially wet clay after throwing on the wheel, your wet clay should be mashed down flat onto a plaster bat so it can dry out for wedging before you leave the studio. Flip the clay 10-15 minutes later for the other side to dry out, then wedge thoroughly and return it to the “usable” clay bag. Each student is responsible for wedging their own clay. If this cannot be done for any reason, ball up your wet clay and place it in an empty clay bag, label it as “to be wedged”, and put it aside on a worktable separate from the usable clay so we know it needs to be wedged before use. Do not liberally toss unwanted clay into the recycling bins. Do your best to dry it out as per the above instructions, wedge it, and return it to the usable clay bags on the rolling cart.

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