So if you are like me, you have probably at one time or another noticed that yellowish sticky mess all over your stove top. No matter what you use- 409, Spic and Span, it just does not seem to want to come off and it just gets stickier and stickier with every try. Most likely the sticky stuff is dried oil. Now I don't often deep fry food on my stove, we have a deep frier for that, but things like browning hamburger meat, frying pork chops, or maybe the oil from your stir fry splattering on the stove could cause this icky mess! So my stove recently needed a good cleaning and after trying to scrub it for about 30 minutes with a household cleaner I decided to search the internet for the best way to clean the sticky mess! I read many sites, and one gave me an idea, it had 4 suggestions of common every day house hold chemicals to clean the dried on oil splatter. I had all 4 at home so I decided to do my own little experiment and find which in my opinion works best! So the 4 cleaners I used were; White Vinegar, Dawn Dishwashing Liquid, Baking Soda, and Vegetable Oil.
So after I gathered my "cleaners" I also got 4 dish cloths, paper towels, an old tooth brush, ran some hot water(as hot as I could stand to touch), and took the grates off of the stove top.
Now I used one cleaner per burner area of the stove. I actually thought the vinegar would work best so I used it on the worst area.
The next few pictures were taken before I began to clean the stove, with the exception of the baking soda, I started with it before I thought to take a picture but it was not as coated with grease as the other burners.
Vinegar
Dawn Dishwashing Liquid
Baking Soda
Vegetable Oil
So now I let the vinegar sit for about 20 minutes, I soaked a cloth in very hot water, once again I used water as hot as I could stand to touch, and poured a bit of the dawn on the cloth (enough to make it good and sudsy, and then began to scrub the oil, after a few minutes (5 at the most) it had only taken away a small amount of the oil, so I covered the next burner area with baking soda, and while letting it sit I poured a bit of veggie oil onto a paper towel and began scrubbing the last burner area with the paper towel, it was quick to notice that the vegetable oil was working, however it was only cleaning the small areas of oil, if the spot was very thick or sticky at all it hardly cleaned it, I imagine it would have taken all day for the oil to work. The ideal behind this was that oil cleans oil, and it did just not for the amount that I had on the stove. So now the baking soda had been sitting for about 3 minutes or so, and once again I took a cloth and wet it with hot water, ringed it and began to scrub. I was AMAZED, it took the mess off instantly and with ver little scrubbing! Now on tougher spots I did have to use a little more elbow grease but nothing to extensive. Baking soda is non-abrasive therefore it will not scratch your stove! Also here is where the old tooth brush came in, I put a bit of water on the brush and used it to get around the small areas (like right around the edge of the burner) and in the corners of the burner area. Up until now I had been cleaning for about 20 minutes, and figured the vinegar had sat long enough so I took a hot dish cloth and started to scrub, it took no time for me to realize that the vinegar was not working like I thought it would. It barely even cleaned as much as the oil cleaned. The mess was just so sticky it just kept getting stickier and stickier.
Here are the after pictures right after I cleaned up the vinegar that was left on the stove.
Vinegar
Dawn Dishwashing Liquid
Baking Soda
Vegetable Oil
So as you can tell the Dawn, and Baking soda were the 2 that worked the best, now I like Dawn, but I will say it took a lot more scrubbing then what I would prefer to do. I was very suprised (although my husband wasn't) that the Baking soda did work so well, there was very little scrubbing, and after I finished cleaning the other cleaners up with hot water I used baking soda on the entire stove and I am very pleased with my results and will continue to use baking soda when my stove needs to be cleaned!
After I cleaned up the stove it took me another 10 minutes to scrub with the baking soda, so I imagine it would have only taken 5-10 minutes to use baking soda to clean the entire stove :D
*Note- make sure you clean all of the vinegar from your stove before applying the baking soda to the same area, or it will bubble up on you :D
Here are some pictures of the stove after I finished cleaning using the Baking Soda.
After I finished cleaning up the excess baking soda, I sprayed the stove with Fantastik and wiped it down with a paper towel to make it a little more shiny!
I hope this helps if you are having trouble getting your stove clean!
~Kimberly
No comments:
Post a Comment