Commercial oven cleaner is one of the most toxic cleaning products that you can use. Some can contain lye and ammonia which actually eat your skin (I guess that’s how it eats the residue off your oven too). The fumes not only get into your lungs and linger in your home, but they stay in your oven once it is “cleaned” and the chemical residues intensify as you bake them into your food. And then there’s the waste that enters the environment with disposal. Eek.
These toxic ingredients are absolutely unnecessary. You can protect yourself, and your family, by making a simple, inexpensive, cruelty-free cleaning paste at home that works better than the commercial junk—using natural soap, vinegar, baking soda, borax, and if you want, essential oil for a nice fragrance.
Chemicals or not, this is still cleaning an oven. What you coat the oven with, you will have to wipe out and that isn’t a walk in the park for some folks. For me, I was amazed how easily the grime wiped off—barely any scrubbing at all. It was fun to watch the unveiling of the clean oven with each wipe. But for those of you who despise cleaning, put a few drops of organic lavender essential oil into your cleaning mixture to calm and relax you as you work. Put on your favorite tunes and envision your oven just like new again. In no time, there it will be, all shiny, glossy and debris-free.
Now, I am being vulnerable here and sharing some ugly truths. This image below was my sad, dirty oven. I tend to create a lot of recipes in that baby, as you know.
I had to get to cleaning it and soon, but I couldn’t stand the thought of using commercial oven cleaner. So I waited…and waited…and waited….and one day while getting my hair done, I came across a recipe for a natural oven cleaning solution in a magazine. It was so simple, it almost hurt. I had all the ingredients I needed in my house, so I went right home and got to work.
This is the result. Wow!
Tools:
Paintbrush (I used a pastry brush)
2 medium glass bowls
Scrubber sponge
Spoon
Ingredients:
1/2 cup natural liquid soap (I used homemade soap nuts liquid)*
1 cup aluminum-free baking soda
1/2 cup Borax
2-4 drops lavender essential oil
1/4 cup organic white vinegar (you can also use apple cider vinegar)
Water as needed to make a “paintable” but thick paste
*If using store-bought soap instead of soap nuts liquid, use 1 tbsp soap.
Let’s Get Started:
Remove your racks from the oven and clean them separately in the sink.
Pour your soap…
and other ingredients into a glass bowl and mix well.
Paint your paste over the entire surface of your oven.
Let it sit for 6-8 hours (overnight works well) and be amazed at how it foams up slightly, just like the creepy chemical kind. You can actually see the grime being lifted off of the oven surface.
Fill a bowl with clean water. Dip your scrubber, wipe and repeat until the oven is as good as new. You may have to change your water bowl a few times, but you can feel good knowing that you aren’t dumping toxic chemicals down the drain.
Now share this simple, inexpensive recipe with your family and friends, they will thank you for it!
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6 Comments to “Make Your Own Inexpensive Natural Oven Cleaner”
[...] begin, I wiped out what I could and layered on a coat of my natural oven cleaner recipe minus the borax. As you can see from the pic below, it works quite [...]
Does something like Dr. Bronner’s count as a natural liquid soap or is it too concentrated?
That would definitely work but since it is pretty concentrated I would use 1/3 the amount called for. Let us know if it works!
Very timely, for me as I made a real mess in my oven the other day. Would it help with the removal if I heated the oven just a little? Any reason why that wouldn’t be a good idea?
Hmmm, not sure if heating would help with removal, my guess is it wouldn’t. I think the heat would dry out the liquid that needs to soften the grime. If you try it though, let me know if it works!
Don’t heat your oven, you don’t need to, this requires a cold oven interior. The baking soda needs to be wet in order to react with the baked on carbon inside your oven. You really don’t need borax, soap or vinegar, the simple baking soda and water alone will work.
you may need to reapply for tougher stains.
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