Household cleaners are designed to destroy everything from coffee stains to mildew. They contain strong chemicals just for this purpose.

That's all well and good when you're attacking the kitchen sink, but not when you're faced with the protective coating on LCD screens.

Anything with acetone, ammonia or alcohol will strip away the veneer on your monitor, making you long wistfully for the days when it was merely dusty.

The upshot will inevitably be you buying a brand new computer monitor.

There are also secondary issues, involving harmful chemicals and static electricity. In a worst case scenario, your bathroom cleaner will seep into the electronics itself. Then the best you can hope for is the entire computer dying.

Naturally I have gone for the extreme possibilities here. It's likely that nothing at all will happen the first few times (unless you're really unlucky). But ruining the protective coating is guaranteed.

It's much better all round to explore the safe and effective ways to remove the grime from your computer monitor.

In all of these methods, it's better to use them when the screen is turned off. That way you're not cleaning through the static too.