My keyboard, maybe like your keyboard, will get quite soiled. From engaged on it and touring with it to consuming meals over its valuable floor, the particles accumulates amongst its keys. And but, I don’t have a compressed air canister or a keyboard cleansing equipment readily available. To rectify this example, I spent somewhat time taking a look at fast and straightforward keyboard cleansing hacks, and located what labored finest for me.
Clean your keyboard with the common-or-garden toothbrush
After a lot looking, I found there are two often-recommended strategies for cleansing keyboard crevices within the absence of compressed air: One includes utilizing an previous toothbrush, and the opposite includes a small, delicate brush, resembling a make-up brush. I’ve each of these objects simply readily available, however I acknowledge a large chunk of individuals is not going to have fast entry to a make-up brush, so I opted for the toothbrush.
My concern was that if I bought the toothbrush somewhat moist, it will injury the keyboard, however after studying extra, I realized that strong particles, like crumbs and dust, will be eliminated simply with dry bristles. I might solely must moist the comb if I got here to any sticky spots.
First factor’s first: Turn your laptop off and disconnect its charger. I additionally laid down a paper towel to catch any dust. I began by pondering I may simply rapidly sweep the toothbrush throughout the keyboard and the bristles would catch and dislodge dust, however this was not the case; I needed to go row by row, angling the comb so the bristles had been taut and the tip dipped into the tiny areas round every key. This took longer than I anticipated and every row required a number of swipes and drags of the comb to get all of the crumbs out. It did work, although: Crumbs began piling up within the gaps between key slots and I used to be capable of brush these off onto the paper towel.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work in addition to I’d hoped. I finally did should moist the bristles ever so barely and take a look at once more. I put 5 droplets on the comb. (Yes, I counted. I dwell to serve my readers.) Then I shook it out a bit and felt it to make certain it was simply somewhat damp. From there, I repeated my strategy of dragging the tip alongside the rows and noticeably extra dust turned dislodged. Once I’d collected a number of piles of particles, I wrapped my toothbrush in a moist wipe and swiped them up. It regarded a lot higher, however after I turned the pc again on, the backlighting on my keyboard revealed a couple of crumbs that hadn’t been eradicated. I dry-brushed these, which was a lot simpler with the sunshine coming from behind the keys, and pushed them onto my paper towel.
Before and after toothbrushing my keyboard.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
Keyboard cleansing conclusions
Overall, this labored nice, although it was extra time- and labor-intensive than I used to be anticipating. It requires precision, persistence, and focus, but it surely’s time well-invested.
When pitching this story, Lifehacker managing editor Meghan Walbert let me know that she makes use of a Q-Tip for routine keyboard upkeep. She says when used recurrently, it might take away mud from across the keys, stopping that particles from finally falling into the cracks and requiring extra effort to take away. Consider maintaining some Q-Tips readily available for spot cleansing between periods with the toothbrush (or, in the event you should, compressed air).
