| Keyboard + Dishwasher = Safe?
How To Clean A Keyboard Coffee spill spots. Little flecks of crumbs in between the keys. If you’ve got a keyboard that you’ve used for a while, this probably describes yours, especially if you like to eat at your desk. So just how do you make the keyboard look and act like new? Here are a few suggestions to help and the last one, well, just hold on.
- Old faithful = Can of Compressed Air. It will cost you about $5 but it has the ability to blow even the most stubborn crumb out of the keyboard. It won’t do much for cleaning the surface of the keys, but it will definitely make the buttons work better. Warning, do it somewhere that you can vacuum easily. If it’s been a while, you might see things fly out that you never want to see again.
- Vacuum. Yes, you can vacuum your keyboard out just using the hose and running it over the keys. Be careful, though, if you have any loose keys, they may not be loose when you get through. They might be gone.
- Cleaning Wipes. These work fine on the surface, but don’t spray anything directly into the keyboard like glass cleaner. Get the ones that are already pre-soaked. This should remove most stains, but you may have to get a little more drastic if they don’t come clean.
- DRASTIC = Dishwasher. Believe it or not, yes, you can stick your keyboard in a dishwasher. Now, let’s just state the obvious. If the keyboard is wireless, uses batteries, or has knobs or special keys for sound, etc., you probably DON’T want to do this. If it’s a standard keyboard, you can put it on the top rack of the dishwasher and run it through (NO HEAT TO DRY). Then take it out and shake the water out, and shake, and shake, and shake… Then give it a few days to completely dry with the longer you wait, the better. Obviously, you better have a spare keyboard handy, because it might be a while before the other one can be used again.
(Oh, and not that you would, but laptop keyboards don't work very well with this suggestion, so for them, we just recommend you stick with suggestions 1 - 3.)
Now… if you don’t want to go through all of this, you can do what most people do, just buy another keyboard. They range in price from $10 - $80 with all sorts of tweaks and built in gadgets. We do recommend that if possible, try to use the keyboard at the store before you buy it. A lot of people like for their keyboard to have a certain “feel” or make a certain “sound” when typing, and nothing is worse than to start using a new keyboard and then to want to return it because it doesn’t feel “right.” Still, you might not have much choice if the old keyboard never gets dry from the dishwasher.
Excuse me, time for me to go shake my keyboard again…
Article written with assistance from cnet.com
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