Your keyboard is disgusting. You, and probably other people’s, hands touch it every day, and those food crumbs don’t help either. If you have a cat that thinks the keyboard is an excellent place to sit, you will be amazed how much cat hair manages to get under the keys. Luckily, or unluckily, it’s fairly straight forward to clean your keyboard and remove all that cat hair.

Above is an example of how dirty a keyboard can get. On the left is the original dirt. The right side has already been cleaned.

The first step is to take plenty of pictures so you know how to put the keys back together. Also, make sure you know how to take your keys off and put them back on.  Next, pull out all the keys without breaking everything.

Using some damp paper towels, remove all the dirt, crumbs, cat hair, etc. from the base of the keyboard. Keep in mind that letting water seep inside the keyboard could damage it..Depending on just how dirty your keyboard is, this could be very easy or very hard. If you have a pet, expect it to take some work, since pet hair doesn’t come up nicely with a damp towel.

Next you have to clean the keys themselves. These are usually just pieces of plastic, so dump them in a pan with water and a little bit of vinegar. Let them soak for a few minutes or stir them around. Then, take each one and rise it off in a bowl of plain water, removing any remaining dirt with a toothpick.

Let the keys dry for a while. As you wait, think about how much easier it would have been to spend $5 on a new keyboard. Anyway, the hardest part is done.

Once the keys have completely dried, begin reassembling them on your keyboard according to the pictures, your memory, and how you think they really should be. (The arrow keys look way cooler if they all point in the wrong direction.)

Enjoy your new, shiny old keyboard.

Related posts:

1. Hack'n Ur Crap: External CD Drive > DVD Drive With the abundance of netbooks and other optical drive-lacking computers,...
2. Sometimes Things Just Don't Work: Announcing Ubuntu's New Theme: "Pile of Crap" First, a little history: Ubuntu 8.04 (the current release) was...
3. E-Lead's Noahpad Details Before CES started (technically it starts tomorrow, but it might...
4. 7 Days Of M1530: Unboxing the XPS M1530 I just recieved my new laptop: a Dell XPS M1530...
5. Review: The Logitech MX Air on Linux For some time I have wondered how well the...