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That’s right. Being somewhat of a germophobe, I can’t say I’m surprised but the “big news” these days is that your computer keyboard is dirtier than your toilet!

From this News-Medical.net article:

“The consumer-advocacy group, in Britain, ‘Which?’ commissioned a microbiologist to test just how clean the average computer keyboard was by looking at more than thirty keyboards in its own offices.

The results were then compared to those found on toilet seats and a toilet door handles.

The outcome was quite shocking in that one keyboard had to be removed from the office as it was revealed to be five times filthier than the toilet seat.

The keyboard apparently harboured 150 times over the level of acceptable bacteria and two other keyboards were found to contain Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause skin infections and food poisoning.”

Cleaning your keyboard regularly is something everyone could and should do to prevent illness, just like washing hands. If you think about how often the keyboard is handled by multiple people… and how just as those people can germ up doorknobs and the like, your keyboard may be stockpiling viruses and germs like a squirrel getting ready for the winter hides acorns.

A while back, one of the fraccy children was hospitalized for a time and lo and behold but while she was there if she didn’t contract Norwalk Virus. She was, in the midst of the days she was unknowingly contagious, home and used all things keyboard related. Being the fraccy germophobe I am, I cleaned the keyboard after her, and darndest thing… no one else in the home became sick.

So today, I am going to remind everyone to clean their keyboard. I’m not talking about the canned air, blowing the crumbs from all those crackers and chips you munch while blogging (or surfing the naughty sites like you all say you don’t). I’m talking about the disinfecting the keys (and the mouse) kind of cleaning. (Although if you do need to blow out the crumbs, please do. Your keyboard will be happy and you will make far fewer typos that way.) Here are some tips:

1. Alcohol wipes work great and there’s no chance of spilling anything liquid into the board, which will probably mean you end up buying a new one. That will take care of your germ problem, but because you’re really supposed to be disinfecting it once per month, that could get a little pricey.
2. If you don’t have alcohol wipes, you could avail yourself of a soft towel of some sort… an old washcloth, a j-cloth, even a (tougher brand) paper towel. Fill a basin with a solution of warm water and household bleach, and soak the towel in it. Squeeze the towel out, removing enough water to make it damp but not able to squish water out into the keyboard, and wipe the face of the keys down with the cloth. You will need to rinse and wring the cloth a few times during the procedure. You may also swab the sides of the keys with a cotton swab dipped in the solution.
3. You may take a damp cloth, and a quantity of ready-to-use hand sanitizer germ killer product, and once you’ve worked it into the cloth so that it’s not squishy but rather the sanitizer is embedded into the cloth, wipe down the keys. You will have to repeat this as the alcohol in the sanitizer product tends to evaporate.

Whichever method works best for you, remember to do it if you share your keyboard with anyone. No matter who thinks they don’t, at some point, we all forget and touch our noses, our eyes, our mouth, and that transfers untold germs from our bodies to our keyboards.

And you know… while the reports suggest we might be better off typing with our rear-ends, it’s not that easy.

I’ve tried.

Please… head over to Humor-Blogs and spread this message. There are people there who blog about some very dirty things. I bet they need to clean their keyboards daily!

More articles about this.

• ABC News’ Your Keyboard: Dirtier Than Your Toilet
• Consumer Affairs ‘Study gives Whole New Meaning to ‘Computer Virus’
• The Windsor Star Keyboard a Dirty Place
• [Image Source] How to clean your computer keyboard