Keep Your Keys (and the Space Between Them) Clean With These Amazing Keyboard Cleaning Gels

On top of handwashing, it’s important to regularly disinfect the surfaces you come into contact with every day. That includes surfaces like doorknobs and light switches, but those pale in comparison with how often we touch personal electronics like phones, laptops and desktop computers.

There are cleaning sprays out there specifically designed to clean phone screens without messing with the oleophobic coating that most phones have. And you can wipe down hard surfaces with disinfecting wipes. But cleaning the keyboard on a desktop computer can sometimes present more of a challenge. While you can usually wipe down the tops of the keys with a cleaning wipe, getting between the keys can be more difficult.

We’ve all been in that situation where you drop a crumb between two keys and have to go digging for it with the edge of a post-it note, only to push the crumb deeper into the crevasse. One of our favorite solutions also happens to be one of the most fun — keyboard cleaning gel. It’s basically a slime that a kid might play with, except it’s used to clean messes, not create them.

The two main properties of this gel are stickiness and stretchiness — by gently pressing the gel into hard to reach places, it picks up whatever dry debris is down there, whether that’s dust or crumbs. They’re designed to be reused until the gel darkens and is no longer sticky. Besides your keyboard, these gel cleaners are a great option for use in your car. You can clean air vents and cup holders, for example. We’ve picked out a few cleaning gels that you can buy right now. Take a look below.