Best Ways to Clean Electronic Equipment

All your gadgets sooner or later fall victim to the gunk invasion and become really difficult to deal with, or just gross to watch. What exactly constitutes as “gunk”, you ask? That would be the dirt and dust that accumulates around the buttons of your phone, the fingerprints on your touchscreen, the white or transparent bits that stick to the edges of your phone and laptop, the sticky dirt that appears on your keyboard, and so on. You do need to take care of it as soon as you see it appear, or time spent with the device will become difficult, sticky, and sometimes just gross – so much that you will have to carry around a hand sanitizer for your hands after every use. Here are some easy methods you can implement with your gadget cleaning to get them looking like new and feeling particularly non-sticky.

1.    Fighting off the smears

Smudges are very annoying when you see them disrupting the clarity of your screen. This type of gunk can’t be just rubbed off with your fingers as, in most cases, fingers are exactly what left it there. Clearing the smudges with your shirt or sleeve is not always a good idea as it can damage the surface of the screen, leave off traces of its own, or, if the material is harder, it will tear at the coating of the screen. The cure for this is simple – a microfiber cloth. It is perfect for cleaning gentler displays and shiny surfaces, it takes care of all the smudges, all the residue, and all the smears that could be introduced to your display. Just wipe gently (you are cleaning a soft screen, not doing carpet cleaning) the display with a dry cloth and you are done. No need to use cleaners, soda, solvents, etc. – the microfiber cloth takes care of everything by itself.

2.    Cleaning the keypad dust

Keypad dust needs to be taken care of before the keys of your keyboard become sticky and difficult to deal with. This is a common occurrence as most people ignore the dirt gathering around their keys and later wonder why they keep going back to delete doubled letters while texting. There are many ways of cleaning all the dust that gathers there and the best one is to use an old soft toothbrush or a paintbrush and simply clear the dust out. For gentler handling, take a toothpick, wrap tightly a bit of cotton on the top, moisten it a bit and gently rub the sides and corners of your keys – this is a much better method, especially for phones as you both clear the dust and clean the device. But you should be careful, make sure the cotton is only moist and not wet, otherwise you can drop water inside the phone and you may damage it.

3.    Cleaning the earphones

Surely you own a headset with earphones or ear buds. Unless you have never ever looked at them, you should be aware that they can get greasy and dirty with whitish bits of guck. That’s called earwax. You need to clean that off your earphones as frequently as possible, or the sound quality of your device will suffer, and eventually the earphones themselves will be damaged because of the tiny bits of wax clogging the small holes.

Provide your gadgets with the maintenance they need to keep them working perfectly. It doesn’t have to be as often as house cleaning, so you shouldn’t blame your phone’s sloppy appearance on laziness – it’s called negligence. Avoid being negligent to maintain the working order of your electronic possessions.