Clean your damn laptop screen, it might change your life

Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

I really want to write about something—anything—more exciting than this, but today I cleaned my laptop screen and I think it changed everything??

Let me backtrack a little: about two years ago, I fell prey to one of those Instagram ads for an all-in-one screen-cleaner. The video showed a charming little spray whose flock-coated receptacle became a wiper that magically erased all fingerprints, dirt, and smudges off laptop and phone screen alike.

As the owner of a chronically be-smudged iPhone, I was entranced. And for the low sum of $9.95, I became a customer.

Turns out the little sucker does a pretty great job. Some “enhancements” were definitely made to the promo vid, but I didn’t feel at all duped. For a while there, my laptop and phone were squeaky clean.

Then I put the spray in a drawer…and forgot all about it.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon, when I opened that drawer in search of something else, and noticed the spray. My laptop had been depressingly filthy of late, but I’d become accustomed to looking through the smudges to my work beyond. When I saw that spray bottle, I smiled ruefully. Ahh, what a waste of money that was, I mused. Such a silly little gimmick. But, having nothing better to do in that moment, I cleaned my laptop screen.

Maybe the solution hasn’t aged well, or perhaps the grime was just a few layers thicker than usual, but the first swipe of the magic spray didn’t yield its usual sparkling results. Nevertheless, I was invested—so I grabbed a microfibre cloth for better drying/polishing action and went to town spray ‘n’ wipe style.

I know, I know, you’ve just read 274 words about my grubby laptop screen and we were both so sure you had better things to do with your Wednesday night. But let me try and make this pay off for you…

So, I cleaned my screen and honestly thought nothing of it—until I opened my laptop later to begin work.

*dons sunglasses to cope with the sparkling glare*

All of a sudden, my work looked…beautiful. It was like I had purchased a brand new device. That crisp Mac UX sparkled at every click, and I swear to god I sat up straighter at my desk. Not only that, I completed three consultations in half the time usually required, finished my ambitious to do list for the day in its entirety (this is rare), and experienced an enjoyable sense of pride and positivity throughout.

Turns out, looking at one’s work in the context of greasy smears is more depressing than I’d realised.

But the magic continued today. I cleared out my downloads folder (I’d been putting this off for months). Completely tidied up my desktop (hadn’t even realised it was messy). Changed said desktop to a funky colour instead of the boring default. And my cleaner laptop seems to have had a knock-on effect in the rest of my environment: this afternoon I found myself deep-cleaning the kitchen sink apropos of nothing, folding my laundry immediately after the machine finished (unheard of), and generally taking a little extra pride in my surroundings.

For someone who grew up as the “messy” person (and who still has regular battles with general chaos), this is an interesting revelation. Sure, I Marie Kondo-ed my apartment and I don’t have loads of stuff, but I think I was missing the logical next step: take pride in what you own. Look after what you use. And don’t force yourself to work in grubby conditions.

Here endeth the lesson.