Do you eat at your desk? How about while watching television? Do you wash your hands before grabbing the mouse or cell phone? Chances are pretty good these objects are crawling with germs, especially those that cause food poisoning.
Studies indicate that these often used items are often more filthy than your toilet seat.
That's pretty nasty.
It gets worse.
If your office has mice (the wild kind, not the one for your computer), they are *loving* your keyboard.
They can lick out the crumbs and other food items that falls between your keyboards.
In thanks, they leave you a lovely parting gift of fecal matter.
Sound disgusting? Yeah...
What can you do? Well, there are a couple of things.
The most difficult (if not impossible) thing to do would be to wash our hands before using our equipment and not eat over the keyboard or while watching television.
If you've got the willpower for that, you're better off than most of us.
The next step is to figure out how to clean these devices without rendering them useless.
The cell phone and mouse may be helped by an antibacterial towlette, though you should check the manual before doing so.
That will probably be able to tell you what to use.
The keyboard is another matter.
If you think it may have been contaminated by mouse droppings, it may be time to replace it.
They can carry a lot of things and not all of them are bacterial.
If you are certain that isn't the case, then there are some easy steps to cleaning the surfaces.
You'll need a means of getting debris out of it.
You can buy "canned air" to blow it out, but if you don't have any, use the appropriate attachment to your vacuum cleaner and carefully run it over the keyboard.
The next step requires that the keyboard not be on or plugged in, as it could pose a slight electrocution risk.
Grab some Q-tips, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and something absorbent that doesn't leave lint behind.
Dip the Q-tip into the alcohol and rub between all the keys on the board, including outside edges.
If it's a laptop, go over the touch pad as well.
Once that's done, dip the material into the alcohol and do the same with the tops of the keyboard and all of the plastic parts.
Tada, a much more sanitary keyboard.
You can use a similar technique on your remote control, though it is wise to check the manual first to make sure the alcohol won't damage it.
It's easy to overlook these articles when disinfecting the house, but doing so will be in everyone's best interests.
Don't let your keyboard make you sick.