Back in the 90's when I was a corporate IT guy, I took to carrying a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and some cotton swabs with me if I had to go to a terminal in a cubicle in customer service, purchasing, or accounting. Women's keyboards were generally nearly black on the home row keys, from all the lotion/dead skin crud, especially in winter. So, I'd start any trouble shooting session with a 5 minute keyboard clean up, and they were often very grateful, just for that. I didn't tell 'em I was doing it so I wouldn't have to type commands myself in that crud. And I'd finish up with a 5 minute "preventative maintenance" of their phone set, which usually consisted of the same thing, plus a wipe down of the reciever or headset/mike, complete with picking accumulated packed makeup debris and face powder out of the noise grills of the microphones, with a wooden toothpick.

Good times.

Eyebrow tweezers are very good for cleaning mice (the non-animal kind...). I worked with someone who had all manner of creams and lotions on her desk. I had to use her PC once and her keyboard was disgusting. Every key was thickly covered in gunk and it was actually starting to smell.

So if I don't wear makeup or hang out around small children, I'm ok?

Thought-provoking. I don't keep any food in my desk.

In fact, reading this, I realized that my attitude is: I'm a man, goddamnit. When I get hungry, I walk over to a certain woman's desk in my office, and I plunder all that food she's got lying out there.

What? It was lying out in plain view, so succulent and delicious. She was asking for it!

I've got the best of both worlds, my office is at home so I don't need to wear make-up or have any food here, that's in the kitchen upstairs.
When I go out to work it is to hospitals so I can just use the Hibiscus scrub on the wall before I touch anyone elses terminal.

My desk is utterly spotless. Except for those Rye-Vita crackers. And that half-eaten Clif bar. And the salt shaker.

What.

The study was commissioned by disinfectant maker Clorox.

LOL!

Until I read this article, it didn't occur to me that keeping food at one's desk is primarily a thing of women. My desk drawer is filled with snacks and lunch-type things, as well as chop sticks and packets of soy sauce. But I keep my workspace pretty clean overall, I think.

Paulsc shamed me into cleaning my keyboard. And my monitors. And my desktop. And my office floor. For real.

Paulsc, could you tell us a story that would make me clean my oven?

I dunno, taz, but try this.

Last Thanksgiving, we went to the home of a lady in Memphis I've known for over 35 years. She'd broken her left arm in October at a breast cancer walk-a-thon, and was in a cast from her knuckles to her shoulder, so I volunteered to do the cooking. She has an 18 year old son who likes to cook, but apparently doesn't like to clean, much. The night before Thanksgiving, I'd made some pies for dinner the following day, and was ready to bake them, and started pre-heating her oven, without giving it much thought, like I was cooking at home.

Bad idea.

Seems the 18 year old had never run the self-clean cycle on that oven. In the two years they've lived in that house, no one had ever run the self-clean cycle. There was about an inch of grease accumulated in the bottom of the oven, and it started smoking. It kept smoking for about 1/2 hour after I figured out what was happening, and shut it off. I opened the kitchen door, got a fan started, opened the front door to get a cross-draft going, and spent 2 hours airing out the house.

Then, I had the pleasure of cleaning an inch of liquid grease out of the oven, and running the self-clean cycle, so I could get the oven in shape to roast the 18 pound turkey that was already thawed in a cooler in the garage. Somewhere after the 4 hour clean cycle, and the start of roasting the turkey, I did get an hour for my pies, but I told her it would have been a much smoother production if she'd clean her oven from time to time.

I shouldn't have made such a point of that, I guess.

In January, the 18 year old was cooking on the grill outside, and got a grease fire started out there, because, you guessed it, nobody ever dumped the grease trap. And this is one of those nice $800 stainless steel gas grill, with a big 12" x 30" grease drawer, so there was plenty of grease for fuel. So, he runs into the kitchen, pulls out the fire extinguisher I gave her as part of her housewarming presents when she bought the place a couple of years ago, runs out and douses the grill fire. Now, the grill is a mess, but he learned something at Thanksgiving. So after everything cools down, he takes the grates and removable parts from the grill, knocks the worst of the crud accumulation from them, hauls them inside, puts 'em in the electric oven, and starts a self-clean cycle.

Yep.

You know, you're supposed to pull the racks from the oven before you run the self clean cycle, because it gets up to 800° F in there, for several hours, and the mild steel wire those things are made of isn't very strong at those temperatures. And he'd put 10 or 15 pounds of very greasy grill parts on them, and left them in. So, the grease on the grill racks started smoking like crazy, and he had to get the doors all open and get a cross draft going, but it's not a simple matter of just shutting off the cleaning cycle. In fact, he never figured out how to shut down the cleaning cycle, although he did break the locking latch lever handle trying. The oven kept smoking for almost 2 hours burning off all the grease on the those grill grates. And somewhere in the middle of that, the wire racks sagged under their load, and collapsed to the bottom of the oven, shorting out the heating element in spectacular fashion, blowing the circuit breaker.

A neighbor came over to see if the house was on fire. The kitchen ceiling got visibly darker.

She said the place smells like smoke, a little, still. I'm going back in March to paint the kitchen ceiling, among other things. I think she's buying a new stove then, too.

taz, clean your oven. But read the manual first, and pre-clean appropriately, if necessary.