Your Phone is Filthy: Here's How to Clean It
Your phone, mouse and keyboard are havens for germs. Clean them up, cheap and easy.
To combat coronavirus, you should be careful to sanitize your frequently used surfaces. Your phone, keyboard and mouse are among them! Before you reach for an antibacterial wipe, though, read this.
How to disinfect your phone
Antibacterial wipes can actually damage your phone. Here's what you need:
Supplies
Instructions
- remove your phone from its case
- fill the spray bottle
- half water
- half 70% isopropyl alcohol
- shake gently, then lightly spray a microfibre cloth
- don't spray the phone directly!
- give your phone a good clean with the wipe, especially any buttons!
The alcohol should let it dry pretty fast. Wash your plastic case in soap and water.
Be careful that overuse of this can damage the screen's coating on some phones, so only use this solution to disinfect your phone. Once a week is normally good, but these are strange times.
How to clean your mouse and keyboard
If you've been keeping up with your online courses, your mouse and keyboard have seen more use than ever. Now and then it's wise to disinfect them.
Disinfecting your mouse
Your mouse can stand the same diluted 70% isopropyl alcohol solution — see the phone instructions above. Just spray the cloth and wipe down your mouse. Be sure to roll the scroll wheel if you have one.
Disinfecting your keyboard
Most keyboards have keys that will come off. Depending on your keyboard and your tolerance for risk, you can pop them off with anything from a butter knife to a key puller specially for the task. It's helpful to have the keys off, though. Otherwise you'll just have to run a microfibre cloth over them like a mad piano player.
Once you've got the keys off, you can let them soak in soapy water. Dish soap works well to loosen any oily buildup. You may be surprised how dark the water comes out!
While the keys soak, clean out the keyboard's base, too. If you have a compressed air can, all the better. Keyboards are great at trapping pet hair and dust.
To really disinfect your keyboard, clean each key individually with the diluted alcohol method described above. When everything's dry, just pop the keys back on and get back to work!
We all have to take extra precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Be sure to wash your hands often with soap and water, and keep your surfaces — including your tech — clean.
To learn how to make your own homemade, WHO-approved hand sanitizer, click here. To learn how to make a fabric face mask, click here. To learn how to cut your own hair at home, click here.
Learn more about COVID-19