Cleaning (again!)

Alright, I think I'm going to end threads about cleaning once and for all. Today (I mean yesterday), out of boredom, I decided to clean up my most "beloved" one: my computer. That's right, I've cleaned everything from the monitor to the CPU, but not that thoroughly until cleaning every piece of hardware inside, which I will only do to dead machines. The thing I've gotten rid of is, of course, dusts that accumulated since the last time I've posted about cleaning my computer.

Except for this time, I've put the keyboard as the hardware that required thorough cleaning. Well, I think I've not cleaned it for more than a year already. Why would I want to clean it anyway? Keyboards just look perfectly normal on the outside, but let's not look at it that superficially. If you'd paid attention to the spaces between the keys and the "bank" of the keyboard, you can see that there are so many small debris apart from dusts, from hairs, to food and even dead bugs.

Because of the dirtiness of my keyboard I had wasted more than an hour to remove most of the debris and hell I didn't even completely clean it due to apparatus limitation. Anyway I'm going to cover the basic steps of cleaning your keyboard in this post in case you don't know how to do it.

First things first, you have to pick each and every keys out, using your own hand (if the keys are easy enough to be removed), or the better choice, a flat-head screwdriver. As you can see, if you positioned your screwdriver like this your keys will be easily picked without using much force. If you have to pick them forcefully, that means something is wrong, but it depends on your keyboard. Keyboards having different kinds of key contacts might need a different way to pick the keys, so you have to know your keyboard well. I'll not be liable for any damages done to your keyboard ==

After picking your keys, you, of course, start cleaning up the inside of your keyboard.

Partially cleaned...

It should be an easy job if you had a dedicated keyboard vacuum, but if you already have it this post is meaningless to you anyway. By the way, if you don't have a keyboard vacuum, I assume that you are rational enough to not use a conventional vacuum cleaner that you use on the floor to clean your keyboard, right? You can use a wet cloth, or like me, use a combination of wet cloth and this "bug" here to maximize the cleaning effect.

Talking of this bug, it operates with 2 AA size cells and is very useful to suck up dust and small debris on hard surfaces such as tables and in this case, the keyboard. Of course it didn't manage to suck up everything so I have to use the screwdriver to move the dirt a bit before sucking them up. With these removed it will be a lot easier for you to wipe the internals with a wet cloth (actually, not that easy too due to the "porous" surface).
Cleaning the bug is pretty easy, just open the cover below and wipe off all the dusts and debris trapped on the filter with a cloth or just your finger. Done.

Finally, when you're satisfied, just simply reinstall the keys according to their arrangement and there you go, a cleaner keyboard that looks more refreshing, without any strategic improvements. Well actually, it might keep pests or insects away from your keyboard lol if you always eat in front of your computer. Who knows if they do make their nest inside it? Especially if you have those high quality gaming keyboard that easily cost a few hundred bucks, you won't be that generous to share your keyboard with them, will you? ;)

Godspeed.