I haven’t done it myself, but have worked places where people would put them in the washer on Friday night and be using them again on Monday morning. I don’t think they used much (if any) soap. Obviously, you only want to do this to basic keyboards. Anything fancy (especially anything that takes a battery, like wireless keyboards) may not turn out well. Most keyboards are fairly simple and quite rugged — a matrix of momentary pushbutton switches with a basic serial chip to translate from the switches to codes. It’s not too different from accidentally running your USB thumbdrive in the clothes washer. Because it’s unpowered, there’s nothing to short out. Just make sure it’s completely dry before using.

I’ve had some pretty amazing stories of electronics surviving a winter in the snow on my neighbor’s front yard, and still working perfectly. But then, I didn’t *intend* to put it out on the front yard over the winter.

But then, I have some crazy friends, so it’s just a matter of time, really.

I try to be patient, at first, but eventually the non-tech-savvy friend hears something along the lines of “You’re fucking kidding me, right?!” joined with a look of incredulous superiority.

I’m a bad person.

Tonight I had to walk my little brother through converting the video format from flv to mp4 so he could embed it in a PowerPoint. Yesterday my mother’s piece of shit Dell was totally hosed, and I had to try everything on god’s green earth before telling her the motherboard would have to be replaced.

But at least they didn’t put a keyboard in the dishwasher.