If there’s one area in your home that regularly needs cleaning it’s your kitchen. Whether it’s the dishes piling up in the corner, the surfaces covered in cooking spills or the floor covered in crumbs. It’s a hotspot for germs and dirt. All the more reason to have an effective cleaning protocol to ensure yours is spick and span.
Possibly the dirtiest areas in your kitchen are your appliances. After all, they’re what we use to cook all the food and for some people, clean the dishes. So here are our top tips on how to clean a couple of the appliances used most by us Brits, the kettle and the oven.
There’s nothing worse than limescale build-up on your kettle. While you can use descaler, there are more eco-friendly products out there that you can use such as citric acid. Fill your kettle to a safe level, and sprinkle some citric acid in. Soak a microfibre cloth in the same solution and then place it on the top of your open kettle.
The cloth will need to be relatively thin so that you can seal the citric acid solution soaked cloth in the lid of the kettle. Close it and then boil your kettle. Pour away the dirty solution and then when the kettle is cool, use the cloth to wipe away any excess. Then repeat with a plain water solution.
Find out more about how to clean kettle with vinegar or clean kettle with lemon.
If you want a deep clean for your oven without all the chemicals, baking soda is your friend here. Remove all your trays and racks from your oven and set them aside. The best place to start is by wiping out any of the food at the bottom of the oven. Then pop on your gloves, it’s time to get scrubbing.
Mix baking soda with a small drop of water. Continually mix the two together until you create a paste. Add water as necessary. When you have your paste, you can put it directly on your oven and start scrubbing but avoid any heating elements. Allow it to dry out overnight before scraping it away the morning after. If you have any paste leftover, use it on the cooling racks and trays.
After removing any excess with a hot wet sponge or cloth, soak it in white vinegar if you need a little bit more elbow grease. When you’re satisfied with the cleanliness of your oven, pop a lemon in there to absorb any unwanted scents and by the time you come to use it next, it’ll be ready and waiting.
You can imagine that your countertops see a lot of dirt and grime, in fact, there are around 452 bacteria per square inch. While not all bacteria are bad for us, it certainly benefits us to remove them on surfaces where we’re preparing our food.
There are plenty of chemical cleaning solutions that we can use, and they’re all deemed safe to use on our surfaces. But like we mentioned previously, keeping it natural can benefit our health in the long run - as well as our wallets.
Pour equal part vinegar and water then mix together. Grab a regular cleaning cloth and get scrubbing. Once you’ve cleaned all the dirt and grime you may notice the overwhelming odour in your kitchen. Not to worry, slice a lemon in half and use it to wipe down your surfaces. You can leave it out overnight to absorb anything leftover. Simply wipe away any residue with a clean cloth and you’re done! A super quick, easy, and inexpensive way to clean your kitchen surfaces.
There’s one important thing to remember before using natural cleaners on your floor. Most leave a residue that can be easily slipped on. So be sure that no matter what method you use, you wipe it down thoroughly afterwards.
Our favourite top-up cleaning method for our floors is a simple lemon juice and hot water combination. The light touch of the citric acid in the lemon cleans the dirt and grime away while leaving a lush scent behind. When it comes to removing tougher dirt, we simply add baking soda and leave the solution to dry for a couple of hours before using hot water to remove it.
Once you’ve cleaned your favourite appliances, floors and oven, you’ve used every natural cleaning recipe at your disposal. You’re then ready to clean other items like toasters, sinks, cupboards and even the backsplash. There’s no holding you back, you’ve got everything you need to create a spotless kitchen where even your guests would be proud to eat from the floor.
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If you liked this article we have many more including cleaning with lemon, cleaning with white vinegar, zero waste cleaning, refill not landfill, how to go plastic free, how to clean dishwasher with vinegar or how to clean toilet with citric acid in our Cleaning Advice Hub.
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