Spring Cleaning-The Oven

Happy Spring!  I always love the new life and sense of renewal that comes with Spring!  Grass starts greening back up, leaves come back to the trees, and flowers start to pop up all over the place!  I also love to spend this time of year doing the typical 'spring cleaning' around our house.  We generally stay very on top of cleaning through out the year, but something about Spring really makes me want to scrub the places that don't always see as much attention through out the rest of the year.

So this is going to be the first post in a series on Spring Cleaning!  I hope you will stick around and get some tips or ideas on getting things cleaned up for Spring around your house!

So to kick things off, we will tackle the oven!

The outside of my ovens gets cleaned weekly, but the insides don't get any love on a regular basis. 

At first glance the insides of our ovens weren't in too bad of shape (that was until we removed the doors and the covers that go over the lower heating elements...which obviously have NEVER been cleaned since the ovens were installed by a previous owner.  You will unfortunately get a look at that later!)

I started off with making my own cleaner:

-2 C HOT Water

-1T Dawn dish soap

-1tsp Baking Soda

I sprayed the interior of the ovens and doors. 

I removed the racks and sprayed them down too.

(and of course say Hi to my firefighting minion that hangs out in my kitchen window) 

I let the spray sit for about 15 minutes, then took a cloth and wiped it up.  

Then we had the idea to go ahead and remove the doors so we could remove the bottom heating element covers and clean the ledge between the 2 ovens which I can never reach because the gap is so small.  Be warned-it was gross!

So we got the covers removed and cleaned under and the doors got an even deeper cleaning done.

It feels so good to get them cleaned out!  Can your oven use a good cleaning?  For an appliance that is used so frequently, I figured it deserved some TLC, and I think we are both happier now that it is done :)

Stay tuned, next up will be cleaning the microwave!