I constantly find myself right clicking into the box to clear the filter. Yes, there is a nice little X to the right side of the box and when I click it then it does exactly what I hoped for.
But there are many mods out there (EMI and JEI included) which do exactly that for clearing an input field. One gets used to that.

Maybe I'm just too old to get used to something new.

This would be just a little step for you but a big leap for me.

Thanks, it works. This speeds up my interactions with the accessor.