Want to clean a mucky computer or TV screen? Read on.

You will need:

• Some clean warm water
  • e.g. cooled boiled water
• A squirt of dish liquid
• Soft-strong paper towels
  • e.g. a decent quality kitchen paper towel
• A soft, clean microfibre cloth
  • I use the small black screen cloth I received with a MacBook
• A piece of sticky tape, or a sticky clothes roller
• Windex, Windolene or similar glass cleaning spray

Method:

First, clean your cloths even if they already appear clean. Shake them off somewhere away from where you’re going to be doing your cleaning. Repeatedly apply the sticky tape to the cloth to get rid of any old dust and particles. The aim is to remove any potentially abrasive particles, before we go dragging the cloth all over the screen.

First Pass: Remove the Grease

Take a small amount of warm water (we want to avoid spills near electronics) and a tiny amount of dish liquid and mix thoroughly in a cup. Tear your paper towel down into lengths of around 10cm and then fold into squares. Use the torn paper towel to apply a small amount of the dish liquid mix to the screen and wipe off the dirt using short motions. Don’t soak the paper enough that it would drip! We do this to remove grease from the screen. Do not swirl the paper around or try to clean the entire screen: doing so would increase the chances of dragging dirt across the screen which could scratch it.

The paper towels could leave unwanted paper fibres but we’ll clean those up in a moment.

Now repeat this until the screen is clean of dirt and grease. You may have to let it dry off for a bit to see.

Now look at the screen from the side, rather than straight on. This will let you see any areas that you might have missed. This will be easier to see with a glossy screen.

Second Pass: Remove the Grease Remover

We’ve cleaned the screen but it will still likely have some dried detergent sitting on it. As it dries you’ll see spots on the screen where the dish liquid water has dried off. Now we want rid of this. Clean out your cup and refill with some more warm water. Wipe it over again with the clean warm water and let it dry.

Finally

Spray the microfibre cloth with the Windex/Windolene and wipe the screen down. Don’t directly spray the screen because it could run down the screen and enter the machine’s casing. This should lift any of the final streaks and leave the screen shiny clean.

You can use the same process for cleaning other parts of the equipment: a very slightly damp cloth and dish liquid to shift the grease, then dry off, repeat, then finally wipe down with Windex-olene.

Of course it’s easier to keep it clean if you avoid touching your screen, eating over your laptop, etc., you filthy animal.

[*] Not a real doctor. Advice given herein, therein and everywherein is purely informational, suggestional, and sensational and has not been ratified by any local, national, or international standards organisation. Your computer is at risk if you put liquid on it.