Easy-Off versus Baking Soda & Vinegar. Cleaning the grossest oven ever!

While I am no Martha Stewart and I am not cleaning with the regularity she suggests, there are certain things I do each spring and fall. Cleaning things.

This fall I have had to add a new one to the list…cleaning the stinkin oven.

In my new apartment, (see "It's not home, but it is where I live." August 29, 2009.) it appeared like the oven had never been cleaned. I have literally never seen something that dirty.

It is beyond me how the previous tenant used that oven in the condition it was in. She was a nurse, so I like I mentioned in "You’ll be living in the weeds for a long time", September 26, 2009.), I give her a break. Nurses, if they do their job well, are giving to people all day. I am sure when she got home at night, the last thing she wanted to do was clean the oven.

Of course I decided to write this blog after cleaning it, so I don’t have pictures of the grossest oven ever.

Where I was living until recently, there was a self cleaning oven, so all I remember was the occasional stink and the house did STINK when the oven was cleaning itself.

I am not sure if I have ever cleaned an oven until now. Did I clean one at university? I don’t recall.

Anyway, I normally do not use traditional cleaning products and oven cleaners, along with tub and tile cleaners, have the rep of being the nastiest and unhealthiest of the traditional cleaning products, so I wasn’t planning on buying a traditional oven cleaner.

The first and best piece of advice I would offer, from someone who has just finished cleaning her first oven, is to remove the oven door first.

I started the oven cleaning process with the door still attached, making the process physically much harder, especially since once side of the oven is against a wall. I worked on the oven over four days with the oven door still attached for the first two. After the first two days of carpal tunnel inducing tension, I did not know that oven doors came off but I wished aloud that they would. I then emailed my Auntie Beth and brother-in-law and asked whether oven doors could in fact be removed. My kind brother-in-law quickly responded that they did come off, but could be tricky to get back on, so I pass along that advice. At that point I did not care if I could not get it back on until the next time a strong man visited and could do it for me, I wanted that door off and that oven cleaned.

Since I cannot remove and photograph it for you simultaneously by myself, I will reference a website I just found that provides advice and include photos that resemble my experience.(see Oven Door and Door Hinge Help).   In my case it came off easily…maybe all the grease in there was lubricating it right off?!? Just kidding! It was harder to get it back on than get it off. I did panic a little, but in the end it really wasn’t very difficult.

If you are not in a rush to use the oven after you clean it, (in case you cannot get it back on yourself) then take the door off. It makes it SO much easier to get in there and clean.

I started the mountainous task with vinegar and baking soda, two things I use regularly for cleaning. I made a paste of the two, with just enough vinegar to cause the chemical reaction with the baking soda. I used a decent scrubbing kitchen sponge, the tougher more abrasive side, and scrubbed away.  

I managed to clean the bottom, sides and most of the back of the oven that way, but not the top. The top was just too awkward to clean with the broiling heating elements in much of the way.

I will say this about cleaning an oven yourself with baking soda and vinegar…it is great exercise. It wasn’t a physical struggle, in that the baking soda and vinegar worked, but it took effort and time to scrub away what appeared to be years of baked-on grease.

I eventually gave up and left the roof of the oven uncleaned, until…my smoke detector went off and then again and then again and well, you get the picture.

So last night I gave in and bought some EASY-OFF Fume Free Oven Cleaner. That is the first traditional cleaning product that I have bought in years. 

I sprayed it on the roof of the oven last night before bed and then used an entire roll of paper towels removing the black sludge this morning. I know… environmentally wasteful, but seriously that oven was so dirty you would not want to wash those rags or use them again. I’ll say this, it was much easier than scrubbing with baking soda and vinegar. It does 99% of the work for you.

I then rinsed the oven twice, first with hot water and then vinegar. I turned the oven on to 300F for twenty minutes and then on to broil for twenty minutes, so both heating elements were used. The kitchen did smell of the cleaning product when the oven was on. It was not terrible but I recommend leaving a window open and not inviting people over for dinner that day. You want them to smell only your lovely meal. I then rinsed the oven with vinegar again and repeated the two twenty minutes cycles. The smell was much better the second time and really only noticeable when the second broil cycle was on, which makes sense since I used the EASY-OFF Fume Free Oven Cleaner mostly on the roof of the oven. I might rinse the roof with vinegar once more and then turn on broil for twenty more minutes but I feel it is safe to cook in as it is right now.

  So in the battle of EASY-OFF Fume Free Oven Cleaner vs. Baking Soda & Vinegar, they were equally effective. If you do not want to use traditional cleaners, the baking soda and vinegar will work for you. If you want it easy, the EASY-OFF Fume Free Oven Cleaner lived up to it name.

I am proud of my very old but clean oven, but I get it, why self cleaning ovens were invented…laughing out loud.

Happy US Thanksgiving!

Elina Grace Edwin