How clean do ceramic tiles need to be before storage/installation

[SidecarBob]

A ceramic tile installer near here retired and the people that bought his place put a sign up advertising free ceramic tile to anyone that wanted to haul it away. In his yard there are several dozen pallets of what were originally boxes of tiles but they have been out in the weather so long that the boxes were coming apart and insects had been crawling through them (at least around the edges of the tiles).

We brought home enough tiles to (hopefully) build new kitchen counters and tile the walls above them and they are sitting in boxes (not the original ones) in in the garage. I am unlikely to get to this job for a while and I need to get the tiles out of the garage before winter but I really don't want to store them inside the house while they are this dirty.

I have very little experience working with ceramic tile and all the information I can find online assumes brand new tiles taken from a fresh, clean box. How clean do they need to be? Can I just rinse them off, let them dry and re-pack them? Wash them in soapy water? (not sure if the soap would affect how well they stick to the mortar) Clean them with some special cleaner?

BTW: I also got a couple of 12" x 24" tiles to use as work surfaces for the benches where I do electronics and work on model trains.

 

[slownsteady]

I would imagine that it is only a matter of cleaning surface dirt off the tiles and making sure they have a chance to dry entirely before using them. But I am no expert on this.