My son kindly offered to fix dinner for my husband and I because we both had head colds.  I suddenly found myself in desperate need of a diy thrifty oven cleaner.

Two things went wrong; I’d  purchased a frozen fish dish that looked interesting and was on sale and my darling son used a cookie sheet to bake it on.  Grease had poured into the bottom of the oven and splattered all over the oven glass.  We opened all the windows and hoped the smoke alarms wouldn’t go off.

The next morning I peered into the oven to a horrifying sight; solid grease pooled in the bottom of black-brown oven.  Sigh.  I have a self-cleaning oven, but I felt that using that option in such a greasy oven might result in greeting firetrucks at my door.

I knew I would have to go old school and clean it out myself.  Neither I nor my budget were in the mood to run to the store and spend money on a harsh toxic cleaner.

I jumped online and found a gazillion references for DIY oven cleaning.  I wanted it to be a miracle cleaner in the oven and easy on my skin.

HOW I DID IT:  I decided to use a baking soda paste for the oven interior.  I wiped out as much of the grease as I could and then spritzed the oven with water.  I made a paste (About the consistency of wallpaper paste) out of a little water and about a cup of baking soda.  I chose to add a few drops of Dawn dish soap to this mixture to help cut the grease.  I smoothed this mixture all over the interior of the oven, avoiding the lights and the heating elements.  I shut the oven door and walked away for 6 hours.

I pulled the baking racks out of the oven.  I thought briefly about putting them in a garbage bag with ammonia as I had in the past.  It works, but I just don’t feel comfortable leaving something like that unattended, even in the back yard.  So the following several tips I’d found online, I placed them in the tub and covered them with hot water.  Then I had to choose; I could add white vinegar or dryer sheets.  I opted for dryer sheets simply because I didn’t want the master bath to smell like vinegar all day. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the dryer sheets would work.

After 6 hours, I used a nylon scrubby and cleaning rags to wipe and scrub out the baking soda mixture.  I surprised how much of the burned on mess came right off the oven’s surface.  Another bonus with baking soda is that it wasn’t hard on my hands and and unlike store bought oven cleaners, there were no toxic fumes.

After I had scrubbed the oven’s interior and window, I wiped out all the paste.  My scrubby was a wreck, but worth the result.  I used a spray of half vinegar and water in the oven to make any lingering baking soda bubble up so I could wipe it away.  And it left my oven shiney.

I ran upstairs and was surprised to see how much crusted on gunk had simply floated off the oven racks.  I scrubbed them with the dryer sheets that were floating in the tub and the racks shined up quite nicely.  That was a great surprise.

While this method didn’t get rid of every last bit of burned on black, my case was severe. It cost almost nothing to make the cleaner. In an oven that is only moderately dirty, it will probably work quite well and I will use this method again.

(And yes, in case you are wondering, even though I don’t like it very much, I used the self cleaning feature the next day and the last bit of baked on black is gone. The oven now sparkles.   ~ And I did’t have to call the fire department ~   — Laura