YEP -- I'M A NEAT FREAK!

I am a self-diagnosed neat freak. I love to clean and I love to organize. (If I could have a container, holder and/or label for EVERYTHING, my life would be complete!) And this is my brand new blog for everything NEAT!
I have a toddler in perpetual motion, a packrat daughter, a dog and a disorganized husband... and I hope to share the challenges, trials, errors, rewards and insights of being a bit "too clean obsessive" in a family that's not so in love with neatness. And I am making a promise to clean, rearrange, organize and simplify my life... and help you along the way! SO stay tuned for my journey toward everything orderly and efficient!



Monday, April 25, 2011

Day 97: Happy Oven Cleaning

It was my fault. I should NOT have used a cake pan that I'd never used before... on Easter morning... while making the Easter dessert!

If I had gone a more familiar route (AKA the tried-and-true Bundt pan), I likely would not have ended up with chocolate-chip pound cake rising up over the never-used pan and oozing like lava all over the oven.

*sigh....
(Cue oven cleaning.)

I decided to attack the problem (after the oven cooled, of course) with some baking soda, damp paper towels and a little elbow grease!


I just dusted baking soda over the slimy spots and let it sit for a moment....


Then I scrubbed gently with some damp paper towels. Most of the grime kind of solidified and got picked up by the baking soda. It was pretty gross.


My quick-fix, baking-soda method worked ok, for the most part; but some of the stubborn, baked-on goo needed "the big guns."

(Enter husband with razor blade.)

Yep. My sweet, helpful hubby got in on the Easter-morning-oven-cleaning action and carefully scraped off the remaining gunk... with a razor blade! EEK! (This is a cleaning method I tend to shy away from... mostly because I am accident prone and bad with sharp objects!) But it worked! And my oven was nearly returned to its original glory! :)


I, of course, lined the bottom of the oven, again, with some heavy-duty aluminum foil. As I've mentioned before, it's much easier to toss out a dirty sheet of foil than it is to clean the oven, and the foil catches the majority of the random food escapees and splatters (except when you have an occasional, unexpected lava flow!)


I also got a wild hair and decided to turn on the "self clean" for the very first time. I don't know why, but this high-heat, door-locking, oven-cleaning cycle always freaks me out a bit. And it was still going when we left for Easter dinner... with my lop-sided pound cake! And since we returned home late last night, I still need to peek inside (and get another photo) to see if my oven is even cleaner now!

Stay posted for an update! ;)


Now, THAT's neat!

8 comments:

  1. I checked the oven again as my husband heated it up last night to cook some fries. Neither of us thought it looked any cleaner than BEFORE the self-cleaning cycle. Oh, well! ;)

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  2. Hey beth...Great tips...I just came across your blog and i must say its very interesting blog..actually i generally use oven for making cake and cookies but after cooking its heated so i used vinegar with water,really it works nicely..
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  3. If you don’t want to use unsafe commercial oven cleaners, choose banking soda as one of the most effective and safe cleaning solutions. Natural oven cleaning has become a very popular cleaning method. I also recommend you to use only environmentally friendly cleaning products while cleaning your oven.

    ReplyDelete
  4. For a greener alternative to the outdated oven cleaner, here's a spring cleansing tip that will make existence simpler. Mix some bicarb soda with h2o into a thick paste, spread it inside your total oven and leave right away. The up coming early morning you merely wipe it out with a moist fabric. Magic!



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    ReplyDelete
  5. It's seems everyone is catching onto the effectiveness of baking soda these days. It can be used for a whole variety of cleaning tasks. And may I just say, you have mad a fantastic just of using it for oven cleaning.

    Keep up the good work.

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  6. The kitchen is one of the busiest area of the house, what with all the cooking and baking happening in there most of the time. And in my opinion, it’s also the area that is almost always messy. It was a good thing that you were ready to solve the problem, and clean your oven once and for all. While there are some who prefer to call for help or hire someone to clean it for them, it's still best to do these things for yourself once in a while. Anyhow, thanks for sharing your tips!

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Thanks for your neat comment!