You could use this to clean your keyboard, but it's definitely one of the least effective ways to do it. Has this ever happened to you? Oh no, I spilled cat food all over my keyboard.
Well then howdy hey, I'm Hippio Tech, and I'm gonna tell you how you can clean your keyboard the best. So I have this keyboard, and it's perfect and wonderful and custom, but there's one big problem with it. It's incredibly dirty. These keycaps are not supposed to have a grime layer on them.
And just look at these arrow keys. Dear God. But have no fear. Cleaning your keyboard is incredibly easy. And today I'm going to show you how to do it.
Cleaning your keyboard will only take like 15 minutes, maybe an hour. But it's not that bad. Bear with me.
Now, the first step to cleaning your keyboard is trying to figure out what part you actually need to clean. Are you the type of person that has a dirty keyboard because you lose a lot of hair? Or are you the type of person that has a dirty keyboard because you sweat a lot of Cheetos on it? Now, for me, it's a little bit of both, not gonna lie.
So, I'm gonna be completely cleaning this whole entire thing. Now, the first step is taking off all of the keycaps. In order to do this, you need a keycap puller.
You can get one with the link down below. If this is your first time cleaning a keyboard and you've never removed a keycap before, you just want to take your keycap puller and get the wire bit. around one of your keycaps. Then you just pull up and your keycap has come off. Now you might be wondering, hey Hippio, why would I ever clean my keyboard?
I actually like it really dirty. Well, if you don't, then the extra layers of oil and Cheeto dust will actually help degrade your keycap sooner. And then you'll end up with a keycap set that's kind of melted almost. Oh, and I bet your desk mat's pretty dirty too. As a bonus, I'll also show you how to clean it.
Now, as I said before, take every keycap off. If you don't know the layout of your keyboard, I recommend you just take a picture of it beforehand, that way you can remember what it looks like afterwards. You can try and race me by taking off your keycaps faster than me, but good luck.
Now, as you start to get your keycaps off, I recommend wearing a hazmat suit and trying not to gag at how disgusting your keyboard is beneath the keycaps. Now, here's something really important if you're working with a gaming keyboard. Your spacebar and other big keys might have a little lock on them.
This is a certain type of stabilizer, and let me go over that real fast. So, when you're taking those off, just be a little bit more careful, because you might have a wire like this, which is a CoStar stabilizer. Putting these back on can be a little bit tricky if you did what I just did and forced it off.
Just make sure you slide it on with grace. So, I'm also cleaning my keyboard for the first time in a while here with you. Let's just inspect the damage. Oh, no.
Oh no. I actually feel like I shouldn't be showing you this. This is so disgusting. Now that you've taken all the keycaps off, set them to the side for later, as I have a special way that we're going to clean those.
Then, grab your keyboard and inspect the damages. Now, take close attention to around your stabilizers, as these are going to be probably your most gunked up keys, especially with hair. Cleaning these is really important, as it's going to make your keyboard tick a lot less.
Mine, for example. look absolutely horrifying and are full of crumbs. But again, cleaning it won't be that bad. Also, if you're wondering why my keyboard might look different than yours, it's because it's an electrocapacitive keyboard. So instead of Cherry MX style switches, these are just a little bit different looking, but that doesn't change how we're going to clean it.
Now, the first step of cleaning it, I recommend using some type of compressed air. This could be one of the really cheap ones that you buy from like Best Buy. or one of the random electric blowers that you can find online. Now for the first step, take the compressed air and take your keyboard outside. I seriously recommend you do this next part outside.
It is way too gross to do inside. But for your sake, I'm gonna do it inside because I'm tethered to my computer recording this right now. So we're gonna hold the keyboard upside down and then just go over it with a couple sprays.
Also, one strategy that you can do. It's called the uh, the drop and pat pat pat. Drop it, and pat pat pat pat pat.
This will get some of the really stubborn crumbs out, but you have to be careful if your keyboard is wireless. Oh my god there's a higher mode! Goodbye crumbs! I also recommend if you have it, to go over it with some type of keyboard cleaning brush. I'll have one linked down below.
It's also incredibly good etiquette to brush your cat if she's helping you clean your keyboard. Now, already, your keyboard is probably looking a ton cleaner. This would have gotten rid of most of the crumbs and most of the hair. But if you're someone that has some stubborn stains in your keyboard, we might have to go deeper. Woo-hoo, yeah!
Now, the first thing you can do to... To deep clean your board a little bit is take a slightly damp q-tip and just kind of rub along the areas that look pretty gross. This will help you clean up stuff a little bit and you can also try to get some of those extra little crumbs out of there.
The other thing that I really like to do is just use a little alcohol lens cleaning wipe and it can really help with those stuck on sweat stains if sweat was dripping into your keyboard. These also work really great for spot cleaning the outside of your case that's ended up quite dirty. Now with all of that done, you've got a mostly clean base. And it's time to move on to the next step, and probably the dirtiest step.
The keycaps. Now if you're anything like me, your keycaps are probably incredibly disgusting. Covered in gunk, dust, cheetos, whatever.
We're not gonna talk about it. I won't tell, but what I will tell is the best way that you can clean these. Now, there's definitely a couple of different methods.
If you want to keep them on your keyboard, then you can theoretically use one of those wipes that we just talked about in the last part of the video. But really the best way to clean them is with soap and water. To clean your keycaps, I recommend you first start with a large bowl and fill it with the hottest water you could possibly handle with your hands. Then get a little bit of dish soap, Put it in there and get it nice and soapy like you see here. Then just grab yourself a little kitchen sponge as we're going to need that soon.
Next, just grab all of your keycaps and put them in there. They're having a little bath. It's bath time for keycaps.
Then to clean them, I mean, it's kind of similar to how you'd clean your dishes if you ever actually did that. And maybe you should listen to your mom. Already, this keycap looks incredibly pristine, almost like the first day that I used it. I recommend you let these guys just sit in here.
for about 10-15 minutes, as that's gonna give them enough time for all the stuff that's on them to kind of break down with the dish soap. Now, this might seem like a little bit of extra effort, but you probably wash your clothes at least once to twice a month, so you can wash your keycaps once or twice a year. This is also a great way to trick yourself into washing your hands, as I know a lot of you probably don't do that either, especially after spending a long time at your desk doing who knows what. So...
After you've kind of manually washed off the keycaps and then they've sat in the soap solution for about 15 minutes You want to take them over to your sink and give them a good rinse now Make sure if your sink has a garbage disposal you plug it up that way your keycaps don't go down it Because that could be really really dangerous if you have to stick your hand down there like an idiot once you've got them all rinsed And there's no more soap on them go ahead and just toss them with a paper towel and get them fully dried out It's incredibly important that you do not put the keycaps back on your keyboard when they are still moist. So give them a few hours to dry out, put them in front of a fan, dry them off manually with a paper towel, whatever you need to do. Once you've done all of that, your keycaps should be incredibly clean.
This should have gotten rid of all the dust, all the sweat, all the gamer gunk, whatever you want to call it, and they should look But we've got one final step left, and this is probably the most important one. Oh yeah! Earlier in the video, I mentioned I'll tell you how to clean your desk mats as well. I'm no stranger to spilling things on desk mats. I'm no stranger to stains.
Here's a stain from my cat who knocked over my food yesterday. Here's a stain from who knows what. You can clean your desk mat in a couple different ways. My personal favorite is you just chuck it in your washing machine on the delicate cycle and then leave it to air dry outside.
I recommend setting your spin to as low as humanly possible, if not just off. Or what you can also do is this. Now, to clean your desk mat, I recommend you use a little bit of laundry detergent and a wet sponge.
Then, spot treat your really, really bad spots with just a few drops. That's really all you need. I recommend you let the laundry detergent sit for at least a couple minutes before moving on to the next step.
Then, once you've let the laundry detergent sit, it's time to go in and scrub. And just like that, you've removed most stains from your desk mat. If it's something that really, really is stuck in there, like you had a bloody nose or something, maybe use a little bit of hydrogen peroxide or something like that.
If you're really sensitive to detergents, you can go over it with another layer of water and then leave it to hang dry outside. Also, if you're wondering what this desk mat is, it's my springtime desk mat that you can get in stock for $24.99 from KineticLabs.com. A great place to clean your desk mats is actually in a bathtub if you have one.
You can turn the water on and... the detergent will definitely assist you. Now, some of you might be wondering, I found this thing on Amazon that's like a cleaning putty for a keyboard.
You could use this to clean your keyboard, but it's definitely one of the least effective ways to do it. Like, you're better off just cleaning your keyboard the normal way and then playing with it because it's fun. Sure, it'll pick up some surface level dust, but there's also just as much chance that it seeps into your keyboard and messes with it in some type of way. Like, This stuff is basically a liquid, so if you left it long enough on your keyboard, it's gonna seep through.
Sure, that might mean it might pick up some stuff in between the cracks of your keycaps, but I genuinely cannot recommend it except more than laughs. Now, once your keycaps are dry, go ahead and pour them out, and it's time to put them back on your keyboard, which hopefully you've cleaned the base of by now. Also, hopefully you took a picture or at least remember the layout of your keyboard, as you'll be putting these back on completely blind. There's nothing special you need to know when putting on the keycaps.
Just put them back on. So I'm going to use a little bit of magic. And just like that, your keyboard is nice and clean and hopefully a lot better for the next couple months. If this video helped you out, then go ahead and clean up that subscribe button for me. Because I think, oh, is there something on that?
You might have to get that off for me.