Just Wash Your Computer Keyboard in the Dishwasher!

Ridiculous, right? Not so much. Although many are willing to entrust their entire keyboard to the dishwasher, there is a safer way to clean the dirtiest parts of your keyboard without subjecting the electronics to the possibility of water damage.

The dirtiest part of any keyboard by far will be the keys and the bits in-between the keys. So, the logical way to clean a dirty keyboard is to remove the keys, right? Make sure you take a photo or two of the keyboard before you remove the keys - it can be most inconvenient to accidentally transpose the "d" and the "f" key, for example. For the unimaginative, imagine a soliloquy on ducks with those keys in the wrong place - highly amusing, but not particularly appropriate! In any case, once you've taken photos (or found images of your keyboard on the net) you can start taking off the keys. If you start by removing the space bar first, you will find you have easy access to safely remove all the keys from the keyboard.

Then, all that is left is to place the actual keys in the utensil holder of the dishwasher for a minty-fresh clean! If possible - be careful of the temperature setting. High temperatures may remove the actual letters from the keys. While I like a game of hide and seek as much as anyone, guessing which keys go where doesn't seem like a fun time to me.

While the dishwasher is running, you can clean the rest of the keyboard. Firstly, shake the bare keyboard over the waste bin to get rid of most of the grit, crumbs and dirt that will have built up in there. You could also run a lint-free cloth over the keyboard to get any remaining particles off. I also like to use baby wipes over the parts of the keyboard that would normally exposed to get rid of any remaining ground-in dirt.

Once the cycle is done, remove the keys and set them out, slightly apart from one another on a tea-towel or cloth of some kind with the top of each key visible. This ensures the excess water has somewhere to go and that each key will dry out. Oh - and make sure the keys are perfectly dry before replacing them back on the keyboard. Live current is not a fun play-toy!