My Big Kitchen Spring Clean!

By Nadine On April 3, 2013 · Leave a Comment

I know the weather in recent weeks has been pants, but I still felt the urge to do a spring clean!

Do you ever get annoyed at the amount of clutter sometimes? Well I do. My husband says I’m ‘on one’ when I start clearing away- he can tell I mean business when I get ruthless and start binning things that have been left out too long. When I’m in that mood he’d better have read the Sunday papers because they go straight into the recycling. In general it often takes several days to get through them all in our busy household. It was in the days ‘pre kids’ when we could actually finish the Sunday Times ON a Sunday!

Well on this occasion it was my kitchen cupboards that got the axe treatment. I got sick of opening my cupboard to have mismatched old plastic falling out. Those bowls that you use in the microwave that once contained a Christmas pudding and you saved it because ‘it might come in handy’ and those takeaway cartons that seemed too good quality to throw away? Well I kept my regularly used ones and recycled the rest. I also recycled the baby sippy cups that seem to have accumulated in the rear of the top cupboard- my youngest child is five so getting rid of them was way overdue!

After all the sorting and tidying, I had well organised, clean cupboards, but the dreaded oven was still staring at me. Cleaning the oven is one of those jobs that it easy to put off but you know you should do it. However the longer you put it off, the more you feel guilty and really you should just do it and get it over with. I’m happy that I’ve now done it and have a sparkling oven but it took some faffing.

Several weeks ago I was sent some Oven Pride by the PR company who looks after them and the orange box has been sitting on my worktop, judging me ever since! I knew I needed to get on with the job, but after I’d re-organised the cupboards, I had no excuses left, I had to do it. Fortunately my husband helped.

To give you a tip, don’t try this job alone. It is a two person job, because the substance itself is so dangerous (it can cause severe burns if it gets onto your skin) and when you are in the throes of a job like this, with your rubber gloves on, there is bound to be an occasion where you need an extra pair of hands to hold the plastic bag that you put your oven shelves into or just to open a window, so have help to hand where possible.

Here is our grotty oven before:
inside oven before Oven Pride

Here are the oven shelves in the bag you have to put them in:
dirty oven trays

The shelves are put into the bag and liquid squirted into the bag to clean them. You have to tip the bag around a bit so they are fully coated and leave then for 2 hours before re-tipping the bag to re-coat and leaving another 4 hours. Whilst I handled the bag, my husband did inside the oven. He put the cleaning solution onto the walls of the oven with a cloth and we left it for about 6 hours in total before we washed it all. You can also leave it overnight.

Here is another tip- make sure that you are having something for tea that is cooked on the hob or in a microwave because we were thinking of having pizza that night and had to re-think our food options!!

After the 6 hours, we put on our rubber gloves and washed out the oven and racks in warm soapy water. We also diluted the remaining solution that was in the shelf cleaning bag with water and then it could be disposed of down the sink. This made it easier all round. However I’d suggest having extra pairs of rubber gloves to hand just in case. We got two pairs with the kit but we used one pair each on the first stage and then used our own rubber gloves for the second stage of cleaning. Because the solution is so dangerous, we didn’t want to re-use the same pair of gloves so we stocked up on some cheap 47p from the supermarket gloves too, I’m glad we did! Also, have plenty of Kitchen roll to hand that you can use for spills whilst doing this job, you’ll probably need it!

It took us a focussed afternoon of work (with a little break in between) but the job is now done and doesn’t my oven now sparkle?
inside oven after Oven Pride

Now I’m determined to keep the oven clean inside, just like I do with my hob which gets cleaned after every use. There are some companies that charge around £50 to do an oven clean, so at £4 for the Oven Pride with a bit of elbow grease and a spare afternoon, you can save yourself £46! Just enough for a little treat for all the hard work!!

Thank you to Oven Pride for the sample, but I did also purchase my own box of Oven Pride at the supermarket before I knew I was going to receive a review box! At least I have a spare now for next time!