Yup. Just stuck it right in the water, sloshed it around some, and then set it in the sink to dry. No idea if it worked yet, but it was a whole lot more feasible (time wise) than popping every key cap off and cleaning underneath with a swab. Lots of crud definitely came out, though, which is a good sign.<\/p>\n

This bizarre behavior on our part was precipitated by an accident involving two kids and a water bottle with a stubborn lid. I’m guessing that the spilled water dissolved some of the roughly four years of accumulated grime, causing it to ooze into various places it didn’t belong. I’d read in numerous places that you could just wash a keyboard in a bucket of water if you let it dry well before you used it, but never tried it. It’s even been reported that you can use a dishwasher without soap and no heat in the drying, but we weren’t quite brave enough to try that.<\/p>\n

Most of the reports are pretty adamant that we really need to let this thing dry well, so we’ll probably wait several days before trying it out (it’s pretty humid at the moment). If that works, though, we’ll need to wash the other one as well and maybe the one in my office since they’re pretty darn grotty.<\/p>\n

And if that<\/em> works then I may haul in some of the really<\/em> grotty keyboards from the Computer Science lab and stick ’em in the dishwasher. Some of them are pretty nasty, but we could get through quite a few of them in one pass through the dishwasher :).<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for more on the outcome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yup. Just stuck it right in the water, sloshed it around some, and then set it in the sink to dry. No idea if it worked yet, but it was a whole lot more feasible (time wise) than popping every key cap off and cleaning underneath with a swab. Lots of crud definitely came out, … Continue reading “We washed a keyboard in the bathtub”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-2o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":706,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/20\/with-joy-shall-ye-draw-water\/","url_meta":{"origin":148,"position":0},"title":"With joy shall ye draw water","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"20 Nov 07","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a detail of an old public water fountain set in the wall of a \"great house\" here in Colchester. Apparently something like 9 houses were destroyed to make room for this monster, so perhaps the fountain was an attempt to assuage some guilt? For those who would like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Photography","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/photography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":576,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/06\/09\/horizontal-grandeur\/","url_meta":{"origin":148,"position":1},"title":"Horizontal Grandeur","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"9 Jun 07","format":false,"excerpt":"Horizontal Grandeur, originally uploaded by Unhindered by Talent. Last night WeatherGirl [Flickr] [blog] and I learned that four of our submissions (two each) were juried into a regional exhibition. The show \"Horizontal Grandeur\" is being hosted by the Stevens County History Museum will open with a fancy reception on Friday,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":736,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/12\/02\/it-would-be-helpful-if-our-hot-water-heater-produced-black-balloons\/","url_meta":{"origin":148,"position":2},"title":"It would be helpful if our hot water heater produced black balloons","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"2 Dec 07","format":false,"excerpt":"I keep going on about how hard it is for well meaning people to make good decisions without accurate feedback, and this video has a nice way of visualizing the problem. Now if I could just get all our appliances to make balloons like that... Coin operated gas meters were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Environment"","block_context":{"text":"Environment","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/science\/environment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":154,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/05\/13\/my-names-noah-and-im-looking-for-some-animals\/","url_meta":{"origin":148,"position":3},"title":"My name’s Noah, and I’m looking for some animals","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"13 May 05","format":false,"excerpt":"I fully intend to write up some of my notes from the workshop (so many cool things!), but recent events (on a water theme) have overtaken and require reporting. The trouble started when the tornado sirens went off during the closing discussions this evening. There we have a bunch of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":208,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/08\/01\/schools-are-more-important-than-pools\/","url_meta":{"origin":148,"position":4},"title":"Schools are more important than pools","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"1 Aug 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Below is a letter to the editor of the Morris Sun-Tribune that appeared in the 27 July 2005 edition (requires registration :-( ) under the title (of their choosing) of \"Pool or no pool, support levy\". This was written by Sub-Evil Boy and I while we were in Wisconsin, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":503,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/03\/03\/signs-of-winter-finally\/","url_meta":{"origin":148,"position":5},"title":"Signs of winter (finally!)","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"3 Mar 07","format":false,"excerpt":"Signs of winter (finally!), originally uploaded by Unhindered by Talent. After a warm and extremely dry (as in drought sort of dry) winter, we've had two major winter storms across Minnesota and Wisconsin in the last week. So a week or so ago the ground was bare, and now we've\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Environment"","block_context":{"text":"Environment","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/science\/environment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}