We live with our computers. We eat at our computers. We fall in love and cry at our computers. Of course our keyboards are festering petri dishes of filth. But you don't have to live in a perpetual state of foulness – especially because sanitizing them is relatively quick and easy.

Dealing with the visible grime, grease, and new forms of bacteria living on your laptop keyboard takes a bit more finesse than your average external keyboard. Fragile logic boards and batteries often live underneath the deck, and you can't just stick your whole thing into the dishwasher. Here's a safe and effective method for cleaning them up:

Buy some melamine foam. It'll be marketed under a name like "magic eraser" or "easy erasing pad." It's cheap.

Soak the sponge in water to make it pliable, and dry it extremely well. (You don't want liquid frying your logic board.)

Gently brush your keyboard for about 30 seconds.

About melamine foam: You'll find it at drugstores in the cleaning section, most often labeled Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. But all melamine foam is basically the same – it's a polymer patented and produced by BASF under the Basotect name. So the store brands are identical to the brand name products. Melamine foam was invented for flame-retardant and sound-dampening functions, but in the past decade it's come into its own as a cleaning product.

The one thing to understand about melamine foam is that it is an abrasive cleaner. Basically, it works like extremely fine sandpaper. Sure, it'll take care of your keyboard's caked-on grime, but it can also strip the paint off a wall. So, um, don't rub too hard, and don't do it every week. And maybe take a break from the computer while you eat, or at least use a napkin.