Get The Gunk Out Of Your Gadgets!

With as much as we use our electronic devices these days, it is more imperative than ever that we keep them clean! Our electronics can easily become breeding grounds for germs and bacteria if we’re not careful. Start by identifying which electronic devices you use most often, and then aim to clean each of those thoroughly once a week. An even better practice is to give them a quick wipe-down every day!

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Today I’m going to walk you through the steps to getting those electronics germ-free and sparkly!

Laptops

To clean your laptop, you’ll want to get a can of compressed air. You can find these at any office supply store. They’re incredibly useful for helping to blast dust and dirt out of the areas they like to hide, such as the keyboard, your ports, and the air vents. Make sure to give these areas a few good passes with your compressed air.

Next, give your keyboard and trackpad a good wipe-down. I recommend using something alcohol-based for cleaning all your electronics, because it will eliminate bacteria and it dries quickly. I used some lens-cleaning wipes and electronic cleaning wipes interchangeably throughout my cleaning because they were handy, but if you’ve got some rubbing alcohol lying around, just use a bit of that on a paper towel and you’ll get the same effect. If you’ve got a lot of gunk between the keys, try dipping a q-tip in alcohol and running it between and around your keys.

Now it’s time to tackle that screen. I wiped it down first with a lens-cleaning wipe (the electronic cleaning wipes or alcohol would work just as well), and then I gave it a second go-over with a microfiber lens-cleaning cloth. If you don’t already have a lens-cleaning cloth in your home, I would highly recommend picking one up. Alcohol-based wipes are perfect for getting grimy messes and fingerprints off your electronics, but they can often leave tracks of their own. So I like to use a two-part system for screens, alcohol then microfiber cloth, to make sure that my screens are super clean and shiny.

After the screen is clean, take a look at your ports. Pretty dusty and a bit grimy, like mine? Go over them with your compressed air, and then use your alcohol wipes to get the grimy stuff out.

I snapped one end off a q-tip and wrapped an alcohol wipe around it in order to clean my power port. Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend shoving a q-tip deep into the ports, but some shallow cleaning is fine. :-)

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Tablets & Smartphones

Once my laptop was clean, I moved onto my tablet. One word for tablets: SMEARS. Smear-y fingerprints everywhere! Never fear, a screen-cleaning wipe will make short work of them.

After blasting the headphone jack and plug port with compressed air, wipe them down with your trusty lens-cleaning cloth. Easy!

I did the same process on my phone that I did on the tablet. Although I didn’t take any pictures of it, I also made sure to clean my phone CASE, inside and outside, with alcohol wipes. There’s no point in putting a dirty case back onto your clean phone!

Desktops

That takes care of mobile devices, but what about desktop computers? The process is essentially the same as for the laptop computer, with the exception of the mouse.

Computer mouses can get pretty gross! Not only does the top get smeary and sticky, but the underside collects dust and grime too. Give it a good wipe with an alcohol wipe, and if you’ve got an optical mouse, give it a blast with the compressed air. If you’ve got a ball mouse, you can remove it to make sure it’s clean all the way around.

Desktop keyboards can take a lot of abuse. If you’re like me your desk often doubles as your “dining table” at lunch time, so crumbs and spills can be a problem. Also, dirty hands over time can cause some serious grimy build-up on the keys. So if wiping your keyboard down with alcohol wipes just isn’t enough, I swear by magic erasers.

Using a little section of a magic eraser will get all the icky ground-in oil and dirt off your keys with minimal effort. You’ll be amazed! A word of caution though: you’ll want to be careful if you’ve got an aluminum keyboard like the one shown here, because you don’t want to scratch it. Keep your magic eraser on the plastic parts as much as possible.

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As for your monitor, just make sure that you’ve wiped it down (alcohol then microfiber!) and that your ports are clean. Done! Your computer will be so happy. :-)

See? It’s not so hard to get your electronics clean and germ-free. And once you’ve done it a few times, it becomes a task that takes only a minute or two to accomplish. Those shiny, germ-free screens will keep you happier and healthier!