Cleaning My Oven

So, this will be a bit of a different post than what I normally write.

I have been thinking recently about cleaning my oven with vinegar and baking soda which I have seen on several sites online.  When I thought about the cost of an oven cleaner, even a "green oven cleaner" I thought it couldn't do any harm to test out the vinegar and baking soda option.  Here is a before photo of my oven.  It is sprinkled with vinegar and baking soda in this photo.

 

And here is an after shot of my oven which as you can see is clean.  At least, clean enough for me.

So, how did I do it.

1. I put some plain white vinegar from my pantry in a spray bottle and sprayed the whole oven with it.
2. Then I took my box of baking soda sprinkled the whole oven with it.
3. I waited about half an hour.
4. I took my metal scrubbie to the oven and with a little bit of elbow grease ended up with the above.

If you choose to do this method to clean your oven, here are my tips.

• I took the oven door off after I had cleaned it to make cleaning the inside of the oven easy.  Your oven door should come off with a simple lift.
• Make sure that you get a good reaction out of the vinegar and baking soda before you wait the 30 minutes or so.  To me, this is key.  I did not do this and had to re-vinegar and baking soda parts of the oven.
• When you spray the vinegar you may end up breathing some of it in like I did.  Remember it is just vinegar.  However, you can use the old tissue over the mouth and nose method if breathing the vinegar bothers you.
• Also, the first time you turn your oven on you may get a slight smell from the cleaning like I did.  However, I reminded myself that it was just vinegar and baking soda.  I didn't use any nasty chemicals.

So, hopefully, now you will have a clean oven, even at nine months pregnant like I am.