How To Clean Your Oven Without Strong Chemicals

We try our best to keep the house clean, but sometimes things get overlooked, like the oven.

We keep saying "next weekend the oven will get clean" but that weekend never arrives

There are a few amounts of products in the market that will clean the oven in to no time but I decided to have a go at cleaning it with more environment-friendly products.

So, this is my list

                   - White vinegar  

                   - Lemon

                   - Bicarbonate of soda

For this way of cleaning, it will be needed:

- Lots of old cotton rags

- Gloves

- Stainless steel scouring pads

NOTE:  My oven is electric and is not a self cleaning, so if you are using this method to clean a gas oven, PLEASE make sure the pilot light is out and the gas has been turned off before starting cleaning.

     STEP 1 - Turn on the oven on the higher temperature possible.

     STEP 2 - Once the oven is hot, get a oven proof bowl (that way you can see if you need to add more water and vinegar as it goes along)

- Pour boiling water

- Handful of lemons

- 100ml of white vinegar  

Put the dish with is contents inside of the hot oven on the bottom rack of the oven, close the oven door and leave it for 2 hours REMEMBERING to keep a eye on the level of the water and adding  more hot water or vinegar when necessary .

After an hour this is what came from the glass door when I give a wipe.

   STEP 3 - Once the 2 hours are up, turn the oven OFF,  remove  everything from the oven.

PLEASE DO OPEN WINDOWS OR DOORS IN THE KITCHEN

STEP 4 - Make a thick paste with bicarbonate of soda and vinegar and spread it on the oven walls ( take care not to put the paste on the ceiling of the oven, some of them have a grill element on it and you can burn your self).

STEP 5 - On the bottom of the oven pour bicarbonate of soda and spray white vinegar into, it leave it until you think it had a good soak.

STEP 6 - In the meantime using the Stainless Steel Scouring Pads scrub the racks and the oven doors under running water - double check if the glass doors comes out, it will make the scrubbing much easy . For some stubborn stains use the paste of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar and use it to scrub like I did on picture D.

A B C D

STEP 7 - This is where it gets very messy and dirty.

With a wet cloth wipe the oven clean.

PS I follow this rule to make sure all residue are removed: as I wipe the oven I keep checking if the cloth comes clean, if still comes dirty I rinse it and give another wipe, I keep doing it until the cloth comes clean after wiping the oven.

As with everything I do, time and patience is welcome and required, please do not think this will be done without them.

BEFORE AFTER

AFTER