Oven Cleaning...the most dreaded chore in the universe!

I hate hate hate cleaning the oven!  I have lived in this house for almost 8 years and have never done it until now.  Mostly what I hate is that the cleaners designed to take off all the gunk are so noxious and dangerous.  I can't even stand to be in the same house as an oven spray.  I seem to be sensitive to things that create a fine mist.  They really bother my lungs.  

So, one night as I was scouring the internet (pun intended ha ha ha), I found the least chemical-laden oven cleaner as far as oven cleaners go and can still be effective!  I was gonna try it!  On my high-tech note that is written down on a paper napkin, I have that this recipe is from Donna at A Daily Cup of Faith.  While I always like to give credit where credit is due, I could not get her blog to load for me at all.  It keeps telling me it's unavailable.  Sorry, Donna, I tried. 

Anyhow, here's what you'll need:

 Ammonia: For soaking your oven racks.  This will not actually be used in the oven cleaner recipe.

Oven cleaner paste:
1C Baking Soda
1/2C Washing Soda
3T Dish Soap
1/4C White Vinegar
Hot Water

Now, first, I am going to show you my totally disgusting oven and racks! Try not to judge, which will be hard when you see the state they're in!  I had no idea it was so bad until the moment I got done oven-frying FIVE POUNDS of bacon in one day!  You can see that recipe right here, if you're brave enough to make it after you see my oven!  (My advice...use foil on TOP of the bacon as well!)  Anyway, the skanky disgusting mess you see below mostly happened after I made 5# of bacon in one day, but when you make one pound here or there, you don't seem to notice the little dots of grease that accumulate.  THIS was just too much to handle!  The bottom of my oven stays pretty decent because I always put foil in the bottom to catch drips/spills.

Let's start with the racks, shall we?  Fill your tub about half way with screaming hot water.  Add about 1C of ammonia.  I also squirted in some dish soap for good measure.  This is great if you do this while your tub needs to be cleaned because you'll have to clean it when you're done anyway.  Even though I'm a self-proclaimed germaphobe, I don't care if soap scum and dead skin cells might be getting on my oven racks.  I don't make a practice of licking them anyway.  Besides, I'll be scrubbing them and rinsing them later.  Not to mention, the first time I use the oven, the heat should kill any ickies.  Gently drop your racks in.  If you're worried about your racks scratching the tub, put an old towel in the bottom.  Or, if you leave them there for two or three days because you're lazy, you might run into a rust issue, but I wouldn't know anything about that, ah-hem.

Let them soak over night.  Remember when I said you'll have to clean your tub anyway? 
Yeah!  Here's what it looks like!

 Easily scrub them off in the morning. Dry and set aside.

Purty, huh?  If you wanted to get every teeny tiny speck off, you could always use a Brillo Pad on them.  I wasn't that worried.  Maybe on another day when I'm bored to tears.  Yeah, right.

 Okay, onto the skanky box of death oven.  I decided that my oven was far too skanky to just smear one some paste and have it actually work.  So, I did something I've never done before.  I actually used my Self-Cleaning Oven button!  I've always been afraid of it ever since a friend told me he put a pie in the oven and accidentally pushed Self-Clean and the thing wouldn't unlock for 3 hours!  It started a fire in there, the smoke filled his whole house and he wondered if his house would burn down, LOL!  Of course, this was 20+ years ago and oven have evolved for sure!  I'm happy to say they have!  I pushed the Self Clean button and heard the lock click.  Out of curiosity, I decided to push OFF to see if it would actually cancel this action.  Yes, it did!  This made me feel better!

I was VERY happy to see that after 3 1/2 hours, the large majority of skanky stuff in my oven was burned into little white pieces of ash that I could wipe right out!  I couldn't believe how well it worked!  Had I known this, I would have done this much sooner!

However, I noticed that around the door and around the very edge of the oven, there was still some brown, burned on gunk that did not make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

So, I decided to make up the paste!  All you do is mix up all the ingredients into a paste.  Remember!  The Ammonia is NOT part of the paste recipe!!  Lord knows what kind of toxic gas you could create by doing that.  If the paste seems too thick, add a tablespoon or two of hot water.

 Using a pair of rubber gloves, smear the concoction on the skanky parts of your oven.  Be forewarned, this will be a very messy event before it's all over.  If you have carpet in your kitchen, you might want to spread an old sheet or some freezer paper on the floor beneath your oven.

Since the door was skanky around the edges still, I smeared it on there, too.

Shut the door and let it sit overnight.  In the morning, it will be as hard as a rock.  The original instructions said to wipe off with a warm cloth, but I could quickly tell that it was going to be a little more difficult than I'd like.  So, I opted to use a cleaning brush that has a plastic end with a scraper.  Note: this is where it gets messy!  Scrape it all off into a container as best you can. I used an old Cool Whip container, but a lot ended up on the floor, too.

Then wipe the rest off with your sponge dipped in warm water.  Lookin' good!

There were only a few spots that the paste didn't work on, but I think that's mostly because it was really thick in those spots.  I used the dried up paste to scrub those spots off quickly. 

When you are sure you have the paste removed, you can give the oven a once-over with some Schwindex: recipe HERE.  Look how nice and shiny that is!  That's an incredible improvement!  A note of caution...look at the oven windo.  See those little white looking clumps in there?  I accidentally got some of my homemade cleaner down in those vents toward the front of the oven door...yikes!  Avoid those vents!

I had to take my oven door apart in order to clean them out.  I was really surprised how gross the glass in there was!  I actually had to use a Brillo pad on one of the panes!  Word to the wise: take pictures or jot down notes as to what order things go in!! I had NO CLUE there were 4 panes of glass in my oven! And lots of screws!  Anyway, I finally figured it out and got it all cleaned up and my oven looks even more fabulous now! I popped in my now-clean racks and voila!  Almost as good as new!  Note: There is a set of drawers beneath my oven, in case you're wondering what you're looking at through the window!

Remember when I said this was a messy process?  Well, here's what my floor looked like afterward!  There are even some drips down the drawers from when it sat overnight.  You might want to be careful with that.  While it did nothing to the wood, your cabinet finish is probably different than mine, so just be forewarned.  You could always drape a towel over them.  It was only a few drips, but just fyi.

I'm super happy with the end result, but darn, it was a process! Not a ton of manual work, I suppose, so I shouldn't complain.  I didn't spend more than 5 minutes total in actual elbow grease!  I don't think it would have seemed so daunting if I hadn't taken the whole door off and apart, lol!  Now I'm on a mission to make sure my oven stays CLEAN so I don't have to worry about this for another 8 years!  :)

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