Adding to our first time home buyer series, we’ve decided to cover some great tips and hacks that can help you with keeping your kitchen spotless! There are plenty of cool ways to clean your appliances using items you’ve never thought of using before! Hopefully, these creative ways of deep cleaning your kitchen will be fun! For this part, we’ll be talking about microwaves and stainless steel appliances. For part 2, we’ll go into the intricacies of cleaning the interior of your oven and oven racks, as well as over-all maintenance!
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Cleaning The Inside Of Your Microwave
Your microwave may be one of the bigger staples in your home depending on how much you enjoy cooking. If you’re more of a grab and go kind of person, your microwave can definitely benefit from these cleaning hacks!
If you have sticky grime stuck all around your microwave, you’ll want to find a way to loosen that grime first. If you stick several soaked sheets of paper towel into your microwave for 3 to 4 minutes on the high setting, the moisture from the paper towels will fill the inside of your microwave.
The moisture accompanied with how a microwave works will help make stubborn grime much easier to wipe away. Once the paper towels are done, wait until they are cool enough to touch and use them to wipe away the rest of the grime! This also works for a toaster oven as well!
If your microwave has a lingering smell from all of the food you’ve cooked, you can also microwave 1 cup of water mixed with half cup of lemon juice for 3 minutes. Let the mixture sit in your microwave for 10 to 15 minutes to give your microwave a nice, fresh smell!
Cleaning The Outside Of Your Microwave And Other Stainless Steel Appliances
Cleaning the outside of your microwave isn’t nearly as cool as cleaning the inside, unfortunately. However, if your have stainless steel appliances, you can use this tip on all of them including your microwave. Baking soda and vinegar works here if you do not wish to use dish soap and water. Another little hack is using Windex or any other glass cleaner to clean your stainless steel appliances.
We’d recommend a non-abrasive cloth for cleaning stainless steel appliances due to the ability to scratch and damage the surface. If you want to reduce streaks, make sure that you pick up all of the cleaning agent that you’ve used using a non-abrasive cloth.
Cleaning Your Stove Top and Range Hoods!
Baking Soda and Vinegar makes another come back for cleaning the stove top grates. If you have a stove that does not have the stove top grates, then we’d recommend using a damp microfiber cloth and a non-abrasive cleaner. You do not want to scratch the surface of these stove tops by using an abrasive cleaner or cloth.
If you have the stove top grates, you can soak them for a few hours in hot water after sprinkling baking soda and vinegar on them. Remember to wait until the fizz and foaming effect stops before you soak the stove top grates.
Alternatively, you can also use ammonia to clean the stove top grates. A cool hack with to do this is to put each grate along with a 1/4 cup of ammonia into a zip-loc bag and let it sit for 10 to 12 hours, or overnight. You don’t want to soak the stove top grates. You’re allowing the ammonia fumes to permeate the zip-loc bag which helps with loosening the grime on the stove top grates. Once your done, pull the stove top grates out of the bag and empty the ammonia. You can take a damp sponge or cloth and wipe away the grime effortlessly!
We’d recommend dish soap and warm water for the actual surface of your stove to remove grease and grime that may have escaped from using oil to cook!
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Cleaning your range hood is just as easy! If you take some cooking oil or mineral oil, and wipe the surface of your range hood, it helps loosen some of the dirt, dust, and grime that found its way there. Just dab a paper towel with some cooking oil, as you don’t need too much. Wipe the surface to just lightly coat the range hood surface with the cooking oil. Afterwards, take a damp cloth and dish soap and remove the oil along with the dust and residue that’s been dirtying your kitchen!
Please be sure to check out part 2, as we go into depth with cleaning your oven interior, including oven racks!
