Cleaning My Keyboard

For years, I’ve been using a Das mechanical keyboard. I like the feel and sound of mechanical keyboards. But, man, they can get dirty. This is what my keyboard looked like last night after years of pounding, and years of eating over my keyboard while I work:

After I took that photo, I proceeded to remove all of the keys from the keyboard, including the ones that have stabilizers, like the space bar, and shift keys. I took all of those keys and tossed them into a bowl of warm water, and then dropped a couple Efferent tablets in the bowl and let it sit overnight. Meanwhile, I had this staring at me on my desk:

I took a brush and gently brushed loose as much of that gunk as I could. Once I’d loosened it, I used a vacuum to suck out the desk and crumbs and other accumulated detritus of the last several years. I then carefully cleaned the frame of the keyboard with a damp microfiber cloth.

This morning, I removed the keys from the bowl, dried them, and then went through the painstaking process of putting them back on the keyboard (the only time I regretted having a 100+ key keyboard). I gave it a final dusting, and when it was all done, here is what the finished product looked like:

Best of all, the keyboard still worked! I didn’t break anything. Indeed, I typed up this post using the keyboard not long after I finished cleaning it as an inaugural test to make sure it still worked.

It is so nice to have a clean keyboard. It is almost like having a brand new keyboard. I have been looking for excuses to type things today just to use it. It wasn’t particularly fun cleaning it, but fortunately, I only have to do this ever couple of years.