Some spare hours left, and a keyboard that wasn’t cleaned for 5 years.  What to do next? Right, cleaning my keyboard. And the amount of dirt, it was shocking…

Surviving 5 years of eating cookies, drinking beverages and cats that walked over and over above the keyboard, it was time for cleaning. Yes, of course the outside was cleaned occasionally, but the inside on the contrary….  So I started removing the keys, by using a letter opener as a leverage to wip them out.

Freed keys

And then, the mess revealed himself. Oooh.

But not for long…

Finally, after cleaning and putting the keys back in, it was clean. So if you eat stuff at your computer, have cats and a keyboard with keys that allow to be removed, you better should check what’s beneath the hood of your keyboard (oh, and watch out using a vacuum cleaner, I accidantly sucked a part up). I cleaned it, and it was a good experience to type with a clean keyboard… Yay!

Roadmap to clean your keyboard

The sustainable approach (we like a sustainable world after all…):

1. Take a picture of your keyboard and print it or put it on your computer screen, or search a reliable picture on the internet. This makes it a lot easier to remember where the keys are actually.
2. Make sure your keyboard is not attached to your computer, or your computer is off.
3. Start wipping out all keys using a kind of leverage. Make sure that  your keyboard supports this feature, and your keys are not broken or can not be put back in.
4. Take a little bit sharp tool like a screwdriver or empty ballpoint and start scratching the sticky dirt of. Try to scratch as many sticky dirt of as possible.
5. Now take a vacuum cleaner, after being sure there are no loose parts near. Suck all loose dirt, hairs, filth, etc.
6. Now mix a little all cleaner / detergent and a little water in a bowl. Use a dishcloth, which is very little wet from the detergent. Start cleaning the complete keyboard. Corners and edges that are hard to be cleaned can be reached by the dishcloth wrapped around the screwdriver you just used or a very thin wooden stick.
7. Place back the keys, but clean them just before placing using the dish cloth. Your keyboard will gradually fill with clean keys untill you are done.

You’ve done it! The inside of your keyboard is clean.

Roadmap to clean your keyboard

The unsustainable approach (time is money…):

1. Start with considering this: cleaning a keyboard costs around 2 hours. You have a good job and can easily earn $30 in two hours. A new keyboard is $10.
2. You do the math.
3. Buy a new keyboard

So how to clean your keyboard? It’s up to you .