All Natural Oven Cleaner

Cleaning the oven stinks...literally. Whether the oven can self-clean or needs some elbow grease, the chemicals emitted both ways are enough to make me gag. Nevertheless, I've concluded this isn't a good enough excuse to never clean the oven. (Boo!) According to my cleaning schedule, February is one of the months that nasty task, so I sought out a more natural way to get this smelly job done.

I found a basic oven cleaning formula at Cleverly Inspired and decided to test it out. Here is the recipe:

• 5 tbsp baking soda
• 4 tbsp vinegar
• 3 drops dish soap

To be fair, here is the oven before cleaning. 

Not too bad... but a few stuck on spots. I mixed the three ingredients into a paste and coated the entire oven with it. The original post says to let it sit for 15 minutes.

I decided to let mine sit for about 30 minutes just to make sure it was good and ready to scrub. I used a regular kitchen sponge to scrub, rinsing often. Overall, the paste really seemed to do the trick. Most of the burnt on spots came off with very little scrubbing. It also seemed to work well on the door and the glass. 

Here is an after shot of the clean oven.

My mediocre photography skills didn't quite catch how clean it really looked, but I am satisfied enough to kick the Easy-Off to the curb and use this method in the future. My cleaning schedule commits to cleaning the oven twice a year. I think I can stick to that!

To see other natural cleaning recipes, check here, here and here.