Never ever te-watashi. Always set things down and pass that way rather than passing directly by hand.
Cleaning lacquer, put into a hot water bath and rub by hand. Then dip into a different hot water bath and rub down with gauze. Then pull out and dry with a regular towel. Then finally, wipe the residual water down with a different sheet of gauze.
Gauze at gakuen is the light cloth kind of gauze, not the paper gauze (so it stands up to water). But anything that’s gentle to lacquer is fine.
Chakin, clean with hot water. Try to start with no soap. Use soap if you have to.
After doing an initial pass, we give it to the roji group in mizuya touban and they go back over it. If they decide we need it, they use soap in a hot water bath. Then they rinse it off in a separate hot water bath.
Chasen, clean with COLD water. Remember, chasen tines have four sides.
Putting away jiku, loop center, then right, then left, then loop the maki-o under the kake-o like a slipknot.
Don’t tie jiku too tight, especially old ones or ones that will be in storage for a long time. You will make creases in the jiku if you do that.
If you’re worried about a particular jiku, you can just simply wrap successively to the right like a spool of thread and slipknot at the end as normal