Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Cheap, Easy, and Chemical-Free

Yesterday, after more months of procrastination than I'm willing to admit, I forced myself to tackle the dreaded chore of cleaning our oven. I try to avoid cleaners that are full of chemicals, if possible, so I searched around for a chemical-free oven cleaning solution. I found one that sounded okay, so I decided to try it and see what happened. "If it doesn't work," I thought, "at least I tried to use something other than heavy-duty oven cleaner that can burn my skin on contact, right?"

I am pleased to report that it worked magnificently. I don't have any before-and-after pictures to show you (and even if I did, I wouldn't show you the before because it was embarrassingly awful), but the oven looks great now. If you're looking for a way to clean your oven, I highly recommend the following:

Remove the oven racks and spray down the offending areas with water. Coat it liberally with baking soda, then spray the baking soda with water until it's wet and pasty. Then just let it sit for a few hours until it dries. We let ours sit for about 5 hours. Once it's dry, scrub it off (with something dry). As the water-baking soda mixtures comes off, so does the nastiness inside the oven. I used a handheld vacuum cleaner to quickly and easily clean up the powdery remains, then I wiped down the inside of the oven with a wet washcloth. Done! Cheap, easy, chemical-free, and effective.

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