Spring Cleaning

Brian_B

FPS Enthusiast
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May 28, 2019
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So amid all this heightened sensitivity about cleanliness this Spring, I decided to do a deep clean of my Keyboard/Mouse. This is my Coronavirus story.

I have a Corsair K70 keyvoard and M65 mouse, which I purchased several years ago... four or five maybe? They are showing their age a bit, the mouse especially. They both still work great, but the coating is all wore off the mouse and the plastic is worn shiny in spots. The keyboard, apart from the dirt, still works and looks like new.

I do clean the mouse every few months. It has a rubber grip on the scroll wheel with detents, and those love to get full of gunk, along with the seams between the plastic molding. This time was nothing new really. A bit of gunk buildup, a bit of pet hair up underneath, but nothing unusual. Run a pick along the seams, rub out the detents, and good as she ever was. My computer gets cleaned religiously, dust is the big culprit there - and after a bit of air she's fine.

But this is the first time I have decided to completely disassemble the keyboard and deep clean it. Took a pic because my memory isn't all that good, and popped off all the keycaps.

Holy crap.

As much as I love my dogs and cats, it appears no amount of love is a match for the amount of pet hair that I found underneath the key caps. It was enough to make an entire new dog. Somehow, the volume of hair was more than the volume of the keyboard. And where the WSAD keys were, it was packed in so tight I had to get a knife and dig it out. After sitting there with a knife, a dental pick, Q-Tips, and baby wipes, I just couldn't get 100% of the hair out. I got probably 95% of it out, but a lot of it was wedged under the key mechanism and part from getting tweezers and plucking them one at a time, it was a lost cause. So I called it good enough.

There was a little bit of dirt on the keycaps, but nothing significant - a baby wipe on each cap as I was putting it back together cleaned it up. The pet hair was just shocking though. It's like little gnomes decided to weave a rug underneath my keycaps out of Beagle fur. And you couldn't see any of it without popping off the key caps.

I will spare you all from posting pics.

tl;dr - keyboards and mice are disgusting filthy pieces of equipment.
 
Should have killed it with fire?
Nuke it from orbit. . . .it's the only way to be sure.

I've seen some pretty nasty things at my job. Even before COVID-19 I would regularly wipe keyboards down with Clorox Wipes and use compressed air to clean. I would hold them upside down when spraying and often couldn't believe what fell out. I knew someone who lost someone to MRSA from work-related complications and it's been on my mind since.
 
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