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Let me start with a little confession and a story...
Confession: I hate cleaning my oven, therefore I hardly ever do it.
Story: I started a fire in my oven. This was a few years ago, after we had been living in this house for 3 years and I had never cleaned the oven. I didn't even know I needed to clean the oven... or how to do it for that matter. I was baking Monkey Bread (sticky-gooey-messy-yummy cinnamon bread)... and I had placed it in a springform pan (thinking it would make for easier clean-up after the fact). So the gooey-yummy juices dripped down in the bottom of the oven. I am sure there was already a big mess of dripings down in the bottom of the oven. So the sticky-gooey drippings kept on dripping... and they were smoking a bit... but I just kept baking because I thought it would stop. Then it started smoking A LOT. I opened the oven to see all kinds of flames jumping out at me! I promptly shut the oven and went to the garage to get the fire extinguisher. I opened the oven again, hoping to see the fire had put itself out... it had not. I realized I would indeed need to use the extinguisher, so I tried to break the pin... couldn't get it to break... the fire was still going... and I was super scared by this point because I was going to be the girl whose house burned down because I couldn't get the pin out of the fire extinguisher... I called 911 and kept working on the pin. After the nice emergency dispatcher calmed me down and sent a team out to our house she talked me through using the fire extinguisher and I actually got the pin out. I sprayed the white foam all in the oven and put out the fire. The firemen came, helped clear out the smoke (with a HUGE fan) and laughed at my plight.
Since then... my oven has not been the same. I have cleaned it a couple times, but it really hasn't been clean. There has always been the icky scar from where the fire was... until the other day!
We went to use the oven and it started smoking... a tell-tale sign that it needs to be cleaned again. So I decided I was going to look into a "green" cleaner instead of the scary oven cleaner that just about requires a haz-mat suit. What I found was quite simple... and it REALLY worked... I no longer have a nasty stain from the fire and my oven is really clean! It is a cleaning wonder!
The recipes I found were all fairly similar and they incorporated the following ingredients:
-borax
-vinegar
-water
-dish soap
-baking soda
They all had different amounts... so here is what I did! I used my all-natural cleaner I told you about HERE. I sprayed it very liberally all through the oven. I then sprinkled baking soda all through the oven. I did this very generously as well. I used close to half a box of baking soda. I then sprayed the cleaner over the top of the baking soda. I left this overnight. In the morning, I sprayed the oven with water and then wiped the paste-like cleaner out. I didn't even really have to scrub or use much elbow grease. I did use a scraper to get the fire stain out... but the baking soda really cut through the grease and grime. I am so pleased with this method because it was super easy, smelled much nicer than store-bought cleaner.
Happy Oven Cleaning
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