Days 2 and 3 of the kitchen cure were a bit easier for me. They involved taking everything out of the appliance and dish cupboards one day, and the food pantry another. This turned out to be Sunday evening’s chore.
The drill was basically the same: purge, scrub and reorganize. I have done done this fairly recently, and my appliances and cooking tools are well organized. It’s always good to wipe everything down and neaten them up, but this part was a lot of work, but thankfully uneventful.
Day 4 of the kitchen cure, involved giving the rest of the kitchen a “deep cleaning”. I would say on a weekly basis I am pretty thorough. I take the burners off the stove and run them through the dishwasher. I climb up on the counter to clean the glass hood on the exhaust fan. I wipe down every surface. Seems pretty deep, right? Well today, I went deep.
I thought it was pretty clean until I sprayed on the oven cleaner. Gross!
I started with the oven. It wasn’t too bad, (so I thought) since I had given it a baking soda and vinegar wipe down a short while ago. Today, I went in with the big guns and sprayed it down with oven cleaner before I started the refrigerator project.
A few hours later, I was ready to take it on. As soon as I sprayed the cleaner into the oven, everything bubbled up to the surface, and all the “not so visible” grease became a mass of sizzling brown goo.
Armed with opera length rubber gloves, a scrub brush, sponge and a bucket of water, I gingerly opened the oven door.
They call it Easy Off for a reason. I used the brush to scrub the surface, and then gave it a wipe down with the sponge. I had to change the water a couple of times, but the grime came right off! Pleasantly surprised by the ease of my accomplishment, I moved onto the next chore. I tossed the oven racks into the bathtub with about ½ of a bottle of Pine Sol to soak. (Put a towel on the bottom of the tub so the racks don’t scratch it.) The good news: the grease and any caked on food floated right off. The bad news: they still look speckled and discolored. I used Soft Scrub and my handy dandy scrub brush to really get in there, but alas; I dried them and put them back in the oven speckles and all. They are clean, but they aren’t shiny. Sigh.
They call it “Easy Off” for a reason! Gross no more.
Next, I tackled the stove. I have commercial appliances, and they are not the easiest to clean. Even boiling water leaves spots on the surface, so that gets wiped down almost daily. I took the knobs, burners, burner rims, and center gas flame covers and let them soak while I scrubbed the rest. I generally do this part weekly, but I don’t actually take the entire stove top off, and scrub around the inside with a toothbrush like I did today. I used baking soda and vinegar for this and it worked wonders. I have a large stainless steel pan under the stove that pulls out for cleaning. I gave that a good scrubbing and reassembled everything.
Gleaming, right? Although I do see a streak or two…
I got up on the counter and wiped down the hood.
I took everything out of the drawers and cabinets all around the island and wiped them down. I used an antiseptic wipe to clean each bottle in the spice drawers. I used lemon oil to renew all of the wood surfaces. We’re talking deep!
I organized the cleaning supplies under the sink. (Spencer actually cleaned under there because I thought I saw a mouse. It was just a steel wool pad in the corner, but I was convinced it had a tail. I don’t do tails.)
I cleaned the countertops, backsplash and even the paper towel holder.
I used stainless steel cleaner and a toothbrush to scrub the sink and the teakettle.
It is 9:00 at night, and I have been at this since about 11 am. Since the kitchen and dining room are contiguous, the floors will have to wait until tomorrow and get done all at once, after I finish everything else.
Dinner, you might be asking? Not in my sparkling clean kitchen! Chinese take out, coming right up!
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Indigo jones 