How to Clean Your Kitchen Without Harsh Chemicals
The kitchen is the room that gets dirty fastest and shows it most clearly. Grease rises on the wall behind the stove, and the microwave has last week's spaghetti sauce stuck to its ceiling, too. Moreover, many products advertised as solving all these problems have a smell so strong it clears the whole room—something you don't really want where your family actually eats. You can clean your kitchen without harsh chemicals and still do it properly; you need to know where the dirt really hides.
Start With What's Already in Your Pantry
More than most people think, baking soda and white vinegar work well. When you mix baking soda with a small amount of water into a paste, it can remove grease built up on stovetops and inside ovens without damaging the surface. Vinegar, mixed with water and put in a spray bottle, dissolves the grease and mineral deposits around the taps and inside the microwave. Neither leaves a chemical odor behind, since the smell of vinegar disappears after about an hour.
Dish soap deserves more credit, too, since a small amount in hot water is enough to clean countertops, cabinet fronts, and the exteriors of appliances. Instead, most people reach for a spray cleaner when they could just as easily use soap with a hot, wrung-out sponge.
The Stovetop and Range Hood
Grease really builds up here, and it's not usually just on the burners. Look at the wall behind the stove and the underside of the range hood—that's where airborne grease deposits and becomes sticky after several months. Clean the hood filter by wiping it down with hot, soapy water (most come out and can even go in the dishwasher, though it's a good idea to check your model first). For baked-on residue, baking soda paste works best if you leave it on for ten or fifteen minutes before wiping.
The Microwave Nobody Wants to Scrub
Forget scrubbing altogether. Place a microwave-safe bowl with a cup of water and some lemon slices (or a little vinegar) in the microwave and run it on high for three to four minutes, then leave it alone with the lid on for another five minutes. The steam will loosen all the grime that's stuck to the walls and ceiling, and you can clean it with a damp cloth in less than a minute. It's the one kitchen chore that ends up being quicker when done with low effort.
Cutting Boards Need More Attention Than People Give Them
Wood and plastic boards have different properties, and it is a common mistake to treat them the same way. You can sanitize plastic boards by rinsing them with diluted vinegar or putting them in the dishwasher. Never put wooden boards in the dishwasher, as heat and moisture will cause them to warp over time. Instead, scrub them with hot, soapy water, then rinse with a weak vinegar solution and let them air-dry by standing them up rather than laying them flat. Every few weeks, apply a thin layer of food-grade mineral oil to prevent the wood board from drying out and cracking, since that is when bacteria can establish themselves.
Stainless Steel Without the Streaks
Stainless steel shows fingerprints and streaks, and most general cleaners make the problem worse because they leave a residue that reflects light differently than the surrounding metal. Wipe the surface with a soft cloth in the direction of the grain—there is usually a faint set of lines running in one direction across it—using warm water and a small quantity of dish soap. After wiping, dry it right away with a second cloth rather than letting it air-dry, since air-drying causes the water-spot streaking people often attribute to the cleaner. Apply a few drops of olive oil to a dry cloth, then buff in the same direction to restore shine to a dull fridge door without any special polish.
The Sink and Disposal
The kitchen sink and the garbage disposal are two areas that are often overlooked. Pour some baking soda down the drain, then add a cup of vinegar, and a few minutes later pour in hot water to loosen build-up and eliminate odors without using drain-specific chemicals. With the disposal, run a few slices of citrus peel—lemon or orange—through it so they have a double effect: they clean the blades and, at the same time, give the drain a citrus scent rather than the smell of whatever went down it before. If you do this every couple of weeks, you'll see the difference on the second occasion.
The Trouble Spots Most People Skip
This is how a kitchen can look clean when it isn't. The rubber gasket around the fridge door is a crumb and spill magnet, and mold can start if you never wipe it. Also, the gap between the countertop and the stove picks up anything that slips off a cutting board, and the tops of the upper cabinets, even though no one looks at them when standing at counter height, still accumulate a genuinely surprising amount of dust and cooking residue over a year.
We constantly run into this with move-in cleans. When a family or a tenant moves into a new property, the appliances appear to be in good condition from the outside, until you open the fridge doors or look behind the stove and discover the build-up left by the previous occupants. It is one of the things we always check during a move-in cleaning, even if they haven't asked us to; nothing is ever left unexamined, or it wouldn't be considered truly clean.
Why We Go Light on Chemicals Too
People often ask whether our cleaning methods are safe when there are children and pets in the home. They are—this has always been part of how we approach each cleaning task. If you're cleaning the kitchen yourself and have young children or animals in the house, the pantry-staple method mentioned above is a good place to begin: it works, it's inexpensive, and you know precisely what's in it.
We never cut corners; instead, we clean them, and in the kitchen, this mainly means checking the areas a quick wipe-down usually misses, rather than using something more potent.
If having your kitchen thoroughly cleaned sounds more appealing than spending a Saturday scrubbing grease from the range hood, please don't hesitate to get in touch—we'll be happy to help. Just ask for a free quote, and we'll go through your kitchen with you before we begin.
