How to set a null value to a DateTimePicker without any compromise?

Just to make it clear that this is the first concern about the MS DateTimePicker, here is a list of famous links:

These articles all try various tricks to create a nullable DateTimePicker. Unfortunately, while the intentions are good, it does always create secondary issues (look into the comments). SFPE will naturally support null values but from a user point of view the path to set null can still be debated. There are two questions:

How does the user clear the control and hence puts null as the value?
How does the user inputs a new non null value when the current value is null?

SFPE is flexible so a lot of techniques can be implemented. But before writing here the result of my experiments (I don’t want to influence your ideas), I would like to hear from you in the comments what would be your perfect solution. Don’t limit yourself to what the MS DateTimePicker could do. Forget about it! Just try to imagine the best answers for the two above questions. This “perfect solution” could then be kept for the default mechanism in SFPE.