How to: Cleaning (polishing) those Piano Keys

My husband loves to play the piano, and is quite good at it! (I think his favorite song to play is Waterfall, by Jon Schmidt ) He used to have a keyboard, but never played it because it just isn't the same as a piano... but we never had the space for a piano in our condo. We recently bought our first house, and also managed to score a free piano! It needs updating, and I cannot wait to paint it! I am trying to talk Kirk (that's my husband) into letting me do this to it....

 but we will see!

Anyways, this is my piano...

See, its in major need of a makeover! But it plays pretty great, and it was free!
 
This Piano is heavy.... and it needs to be moved outside before I paint it... so until I can get a couple of men over here to volunteer to move it for me... this color it will stay! BUT... that doesnt mean it has to stay dirty! I don't think the people who had it before us cleaned it recently...

O.K. ... so it's not TERRIBLE... but it still needs a cleaning! I saw something about cleaning piano keys with MAYONNAISE on Pinterest... but couldn't find any photos of the actual process (to see if it did anything!) SO I figured what the heck I'll try it and if it works, I'll blog about it!

For some reason... I expected the mayonnaise to whiten the piano keys?? This piano is old... and I am not sure if the keys were ever WHITE, so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when it didn't whiten the keys. (Don't give up on me yet... keep reading!) But it sure did clean them! I thought it was like 'polishing' the piano keys!

First I wiped down all the keys with a damp rag to get rid of dust/ finger prints...

This got rid of most of the dirt/ spots that were very visible to the eye. Check out that rag....

O.K. sorry I know that's gross...

Anyways, next I put a thin layer of mayonnaise on all the white keys (trying to keep as much out of the cracks as possible.) This was the first half.. I tried doing it with a baby spoon, I gave up and used my finger on the rest of the keys. A lot less got in the cracks (not terrible if it does, just means longer time cleaning up) and it was easier to apply a thin layer. (sorry don't have a picture!)

Leave the mayonnaise on the keys for about 3 minutes. Take a damp cloth, and wipe of as much of the mayonnaise as you can. Then I took a dry cloth (It took me two rags) and wiped off the rest of the mayonnaise, getting it all out of the cracks, lifting up some keys and pushing down others.... (really this isn't that hard, the whole process probably took 15 minutes- including the prep) After I got almost all the mayonnaise off, I used another damp rag to wipe anything that may have been left behind. Finally, I took one more dry rag and buffed all the keys (black ones too!)

You might be wandering, is this worth it since it didn't whiten the piano keys at all? I say YES! When I was wiping down all the mayonnaise, I noticed a lot more dirt/ grime coming off the keys that the water itself hadn't picked up: This photo is after I wiped the keys with water (and I thought they looked clean then!)  and was buffing the mayonnaise off, and this is just from 2 keys! 

 And it left a nice polished look. So they aren't necessarily 'whiter' but they sure are brighter!