National Clean Out Your Computer Day

I am thankful for the most important key in history was invented. It’s not the key to your house, your car, your boat, your safety deposit box, your bike lock or your private community. It’s the key to order, sanity, and peace of mind. The key is ‘Delete.’

Elayne Boosler

When your computer is running slowly, you may stop to wonder what’s causing it. The causes can be legion, and not all of them have to do with the contents of your hard drive.

That’s an excellent place to start, but one must remember that body and mind are tied in people, and that’s just as true in computers.

National Clean Out Your Computer Day reminds you that you need to take care of the whole system, inside and out, digital and physical, so get to it!

How to Celebrate National Clean Out Your Computer Day

Clean the Dust Out

What to do on this day is right there in the name– clean out your computer! When was the last time you cleaned out your fans and dusted off your motherboard?

Have you looked at your graphics card to see if its cooling fan and fins are clean? For that matter, when did you last clean out you even opened the case?

Make sure that your system is powered down and disconnected (don’t panic! You’ll survive the half-hour or so you have it down, I promise!) and then find a good online tutorial to show you the way to get it done safely.

All that dust traps heat, and if you aren’t aware, computers really don’t function well under high stress and heat.

Start by tearing down that case, opening it up, and clean out all of the dust and grime that’s inside. You may have more dust than you think in there, and it’s causing your system to slow down.

Clean From the Inside Out

Get the Hard Drive cleaned out next. Perform some recommended system maintenance checks and tidy up those old files, apps, documents and other items that are no longer necessary.

A clogged up hard drive can be just as bad as a clogged up fan on your computer, though it won’t as often destroy your computer. Also, perform a cookie cleanup on your web browser to make it run more efficiently.

Now you can enjoy another year of a smooth running computer, almost as fast as the day you bought them!

History of National Clean Out Your Computer Day

National Clean Out Your Computer Day was started in 2000 as an initiative of the Institute for Business Technology.

The event was started to act as a reminder for people all over the world to get the most out of their computers — and stay safe while using them.

Facts About National Clean Out Your Computer Day

Dust Is One of the Leading Physical Threats to PCs  

In field studies of electronics in offices and industrial settings, dust has been identified as a major contributor to computer failures because it clogs air vents, coats heat sinks, and slows or even stops cooling fans.

The U.S. General Services Administration notes that dust and restricted airflow can cause computers to overheat, which may shorten component lifespan or trigger sudden shutdowns, so many IT departments include internal dust removal as part of routine preventive maintenance. 

Why Nearly Full Drives Can Slow a Computer  

Modern operating systems rely on free disk space for “virtual memory” (paging/swap files) and for temporary working files; when a drive is close to full, the system has fewer contiguous blocks to work with and must work harder to read and write data.

Microsoft’s performance guidance explains that low free space can cause noticeable slowdowns because Windows constantly uses disk as an extension of RAM, especially during multitasking or large updates.  

Browser Caches and Cookies Quietly Accumulate Megabytes  

Web browsers routinely store cached images, scripts, and cookies to speed up browsing, but the stored data can grow into hundreds of megabytes or more over time.

Mozilla’s Firefox documentation notes that while a cache improves performance up to a point, a very large cache can consume significant disk space and may contribute to problems such as pages not updating correctly, which is why periodic clearing is part of standard troubleshooting advice.  

Digital Clutter Has a Real Environmental Cost  

Every file stored in the cloud or an email kept indefinitely sits on servers that must be powered and cooled around the clock.

The International Energy Agency estimates that data centers consume around 1–1.5% of global electricity use, and European “digital cleanup” campaigns highlight that deleting unneeded emails, files, and backups can help reduce storage demand and, incrementally, the energy footprint of digital services.  

Most People Back Up Less Often Than Experts Recommend 

Cybersecurity agencies recommend following the “3-2-1” backup rule—three copies of data, on two different media, with one off‑site—but surveys show that home users rarely meet this standard.

A 2023 poll cited by the World Backup Day initiative reported that about 25% of people never back up any of their devices, leaving them vulnerable to data loss from hardware failure, theft, or ransomware.

Unpatched Software Is a Common Pathway for Attacks  

Many successful cyberattacks exploit known software vulnerabilities for which fixes already exist.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) maintains a catalog of “known exploited vulnerabilities” and repeatedly warns that failing to apply routine security updates on operating systems and applications is one of the most common and preventable risk factors for both individuals and organizations.  

Physical Keyboard and Mouse Cleaning Is a Hygiene Issue Too  

Computer peripherals are not only dust magnets but can harbor high levels of bacteria because they are touched constantly and seldom cleaned.

Research measuring microbial contamination in offices has found keyboards and mice can carry more bacteria per square inch than many common surfaces, leading health agencies such as the U.K.’s National Health Service to recommend regular cleaning of computer equipment as part of workplace infection-control practices.