It’s a new year, which means new goals right?
Well, a HUGE goal I’ve had for a while now was to clean my oven. Boy or boy was it yucky and I have been using it almost a year without cleaning it, yes– I did just confess that.
You see, we bought our first house, a Log-home and moved in (in January of last year), got mostly unpacked, had a homebirth, started a new school year and got on with life. Time passed and I kept telling myself I’ll do it later. Later came and went but while my parents were visiting for Christmas, my mom got it started.
I am pretty sure the oven hadn’t been cleaned in years, if not decades.
With a little elbow grease and this natural recipe, we got our oven to look (almost) as good as new, considering it is a 20 year old oven.
Natural Oven Cleaner
- baking soda
- vinegar
- *optional: lemon essential oil
- Gather ingredients, remove racks
- Before your ready to start cleaning, make a paste using 2 parts baking soda, 1 part vinegar, adding in about 10 drops of lemon essential oil if you'd like to, set aside
- Spread paste all over turn oven. Turn oven on high for about 30-40 seconds, then turn off, let sit for a minimum of 1 hour or overnight
- Get a washcloth or scrubber and begin scrubbing all over, residue should begin to come off
- Rinse washcloth or scrubber as needed, scrub and repeat using paste
- Once finished, wet a wash cloth and wipe out all remaining paste, and you should have a shiny clean oven
We got started using the recipe above. Since it’s non-toxic and all natural, I felt safe letting my kids help, after all this helps with teaching them that everyone needs to share the workload as well as teaches them responsibility. You probably can see a spot in the middle, well, we scrubbed and scrubbed but couldn’t get the 20 years of baked on residue in the middle but maybe next time, it’ll come off.
As I noted in the recipe, the Lemon essential oil is not a mandatory ingredient but I recommend it because not only does it help make your cleaning area smell wonderful, it helps to break down the grease and helps to make the surface area sparkle! 🙂
How do you keep your oven clean?
About Rachel
I follow the same protocol and it works great. This has inspired me to clean it again!
That is amazing! I am so trying this!
Holy clean dish washer. That’s incredible. Great DIY oven cleaning recipe…thanks for sharing!!!
So cool! I love using this method too. It really does work! 🙂
My oven looks like the before picture, and I’m all about natural ways to clean. This post is perfect, and I am so appreciative that you took the time to write it! Thank you!!
Wow, very impressive and such a simple recipe! Love it, thanks!
My oven is Begging for this right now, haha! I have been putting it off because I just couldn’t handle any toxic chemicals and didn’t really think it could be this easy, lol! I can’t wait to try this, thanks for the article!
I’ve always heard baking soda makes a good oven cleaner, but I’ve never seen it in action. Wow! That’s impressive!
Baking soda is magical 😉
You have the cutest helpers!