Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Chemical Free Oven Cleaner... WIN!

If anyone had told me that you could clean an oven without dangerous chemicals I would have laughed at them. And then I turned into the hippie mom I am and I became determined to find a way. Here's where Pinterest is again the most wonderful website IN THE WORLD.

Enter, this pin. I didn't believe it... I mean yes, vinegar and baking soda clean my counters just fine. The stuff isn't baked onto my counter tops though... My counter tops haven't baked more pizzas than Papa Johns... I was fully prepared to write another fail post. Until I tried it...

This is exceptionally embarassing. I haven't cleaned my oven in, um, ahem, a while. We'll leave it at that.
Here's what you do:
First, scrape out the chunks of burned pizza goodness or whatever might or might not be in the bottom of your oven... Mine was, as you can see, free of nasty bits of charred dinner. Haha.

Take a spray bottle and fill it with vinegar and water. I would assume you could use straight vinegar, but the original blog said to use a mixture. I did a ratio of 2:1 vinegar to water.

Spray your vinegar water all over your oh so yucky oven.

Then take a box of baking soda and sprinkle it liberally over the moistened oven nastiness. Like so:

Immediately, it will begin to bubble and fizz. This is good. This is what keeps you from having to scrub for six days to get all that garbage out. You can see that I used A LOT of baking soda and vinegar. The less scrubbing, the better for me. Because I don't like cleaning.

Leave this to do it's magic while you wash dishes, watch Days of Our Lives, or knit.. I'll leave it up to you all to figure out which ones of these I did and which ones I didn't. You can leave it for 10 minutes or almost an hour.

Right before I started cleaning, I sprayed and sprinkled again. This was in hopes of having to do even less scrubbing.

I then took a bit of steel wool and pretty much just gently rubbed in a circular motion and all of the gunk came off!! Don't believe me? LOOK!

That's me, IN THE REFLECTION of my oven door! Taking a pic of the amazing work that I didn't have to do! I used the steel wool and then just wiped the stuff off with one of my awesome knitted dishcloths. I would say it took less than 15 minutes to do the entire oven.. I still haven't done the racks yet. Had to go get the kiddos from Mother's Day Out. Darn, right?

Does it smell? Sort of, vinegar doesn't have the most pleasant odor. But I didn't feel like I needed a gas mask or a hazmat suit to clean. And it was easy. And cheap.

Go now! Clean your ovens! Report back! 

8 comments:

  1. Bring you cleaning supplies with you when you come and you can "teach" me :P

    Tiff

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  2. I use vinegar and baking soda together all the time!! LOVE!!

    Another secret... peroxid and baking soda polish metal in the bathroom like you wouldn't believe :)

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  3. Ooooh! I'm going to try this too!!! My oven door is HORRIBLE!

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  4. Oh and guess who gets another blog award, Missy? :P

    http://musingsofamanicmama.blogspot.com/2013/03/its-gonna-be-bright-sunshiny-day.html

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  7. Thank you for this - I've shared it on my Facebook. I think more and more people are going for natural and chemical free solutions to cleaning these days. I didn't realise at first but a lot of professional companies to this too. I've been using a couple of professional companies for my various properties and they do a fantastic job of this. I'm disabled so it's sometimes hard for me to get down to clean devices myself, but I'd be happy to recommend oven cleaning maidstone if anyone's in the area. But with blogs like this, people can continue to arm themselves with the knowledge needed to have a clean, happy and safe home - great work, thanks again!

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  8. That really is your reflection in the oven glass!!! no chance of seeing my reflection in mine.....

    I must give your guide a go myself over the weekend, when I am off work. You have made it seem pretty simple, so lets see how I get on with it!

    When I was living in south yorks I actually paid to have my oven cleaned by oven cleaning sheffield. The company I used don't cover my new area as I am around 100 miles away from my old place! Oh well, maybe with your guide I can actually do it myself this time.

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