It’s important for your fiber to be cleaned before connecting it. This will reduce some signal quality degradation cause by obstruction debris. Also cleaning your connectors before connecting it to a mating adapter will prevent transporting any contamination to your mating adapter. A unused connectors or mating adapter should always have a cap at the end. Fibers should be stored when possible in a dry and clean area with low traffic to not risk the fiber from being damage. Clean clickers are really compact tools use to clean fiber and inexpensive to own.