If you have: Grimy kitchen wallsThe combination of cooking grease, steam, and regular old dust creates a sticky residue on your kitchen's surfaces. Clean up grease splatters from your walls, range hood, and cabinets by washing them with a sponge dipped in undiluted white vinegar. another sponge soaked in water to rinse, then wipe dry with paper towels. Tip: Don't forget the top of your fridge, which can get greasy as well. If you have: A splatter-filled microwaveIf the interior of your microwave is a real mess, use the softening power of steam to your advantage. Mix 1/2 cup white distilled vinegar and 1/2 cup water in a glass bowl, then bring to a rolling boil inside the microwave. Carefully remove the hot bowl and wipe the microwave clean of the now-loosened food using a paper towel. If you have: A gross kitchen garbage canAn often-overlooked source of real filth is the kitchen garbage, as traces of food and liquid make their way out of the bin liner

and onto the can itself, leaving a smelly mess. detergent or multi-surface cleaning liquid and a nylon-bristle brush (your bathtub is an ideal place for this task). Rinse and dry thoroughly with paper towels. If you have: Crusty, burned-on oven spillsDon’t leave that baked-on mess on the bottom of your oven; it can give off unpleasant odors and even create smoke. If you can’t run a self-cleaning cycle, spritz with water from a spray bottle, then sprinkle on some baking soda and add a few drops of white vinegar. Let the mixture bubble for a minute or so, then use a scrub sponge to sweep away the grime. Follow with a thorough wipe-down with a If you have: Cloudy, unsightly shower soap scumA haze of soap residue and hard water spots accumulates quickly in showers and on shower doors. remove, use a sponge or clean cloth to wipe room-temperature white vinegar onto your shower walls and door. The acid in the vinegar will help dissolve the residue.

Wipe clean with a damp paper towel. To prevent buildup, use a squeegee on the surfaces after each shower. Tip: Use a nylon brush to scrub out the shower door's tracks. If you have: A less-than-tidy toilet bowlTime can be your ally when tackling a dirty toilet. To clean and deodorize the toilet bowl, pour one cup of whitebest 12v auto vacuum cleaner distilled vinegar or multi-surface cleaning liquid into the bowl and let sit several hours or overnight, ifbest vacuum cleaner australia 2010Then scrub well with a toilet brush and flush.best bagless vacuum cleaner with washable filter If you have: Filthy windowsClean windows make everything seem brighter, but you don’t need additional bottles of window cleaner for the job—simply use a multi-surface spray cleaner or a water-vinegar solution, and wipe windows down using crumpled-up newspapers or paper towels.

Tip: Wash windows on a cloudy day; the windows dry more slowly and will streak less. If you have: Pet hair everywhereOf course, you can use special lint rollers and dry sponges—but if you’re in a hurry, simply dampen the palm of your hand and wipe the pet hair off in a downward motion. Rubber gloves or latex gloves also work, as does the sticky side of a Sources: Stylelist, Woman's Day< 12 3 4 > 24,410 posts, read 24,491,862 times 1,171 posts, read 954,339 times The hood was never cleaned so I .. Originally Posted by Townandcountrygal sprayed it with oven cleaner. Took the paint right off the hood. 10,996 posts, read 13,910,788 times Originally Posted by Mistermobile Oven cleaner is nothing a lye in a fancy package. Lye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 254 posts, read 332,939 times I gave my Vent-a-hood a cleaning today. It's much better, but I think I need to get a professional in. I took out one of the three fans and degreased it, but it was a pain and a half to remove and put back in.

This thing needs more disassembly, and a better cleaning job than I am capable of. I used a can of Zep Heavy Duty Foaming Degreaser that I got at Home Depot. I was very impressed with how well it ate through the grease. Spray it on, and in ten minutes most of the grease ran right off. A few tougher areas required 2 or 3 times to get through the layers. The top of the hood was really sticky, and that came off beautifully after just a couple of minutes of putting on the spray. 6,823 posts, read 9,614,877 times 857 posts, read 4,015,908 times 2,967 posts, read 3,120,584 times 190 posts, read 295,492 timesWhat color do you paint your pot and pans? 3,483 posts, read 2,289,100 times Originally Posted by thecoalman Try some regular dishwasher detergent, you may need to keep wiping it down to keep it wet and give it chance to work. Note I said dishwasher. If that doesn't work there is product on the market called "LA's Totally Awesome" and the name doesn't lie.

Other dregreasers like 409 are child's play. I concur about the Awesome! It works like a charm, but be careful, kind of strong. It is only a dollar at any dollar store. But as someone else suggested - just replace it! 472 posts, read 583,630 times Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.A friend of mine recently cancelled our Saturday night plans. It wasn’t personal: Her cleaning went full-on Amityville Horror when she got to the kitchen's range hood. It had been a little too long since the last check-up. The stove's range filters were overdue for degreasing and sent my friend into a cleaning black hole. The source of all of this scum was in the oven's range hood, and it wasn’t letting go. Most dedicated cooks are pretty vigilant about cleaning the counters, the sink, the stovetop—anywhere the eye can see.

But sometimes, even that isn’t enough. The out-of-sight, out-of-mind spots are always the scariest, and the range hood is a prime example. I spoke with Donna Smallin Kuper, a certified house cleaning technician (yes, that’s a thing) and author of Clear the Clutter, Find the Happiness to get to the bottom of the filth above your stove. The range hood is a large fan housed in a structure suspended over the stove. It's there to keep your kitchen air cleaner during high-impact (and high-mess) frying and searing. The range's fan sucks up smoke, along with any airborne droplets of grease, and keeps the kitchen fresher—even during the most intense frying sessions. Some varieties are duct-based, meaning they utilize a duct tunnel system to funnel the kitchen's fumes out of the building entirely. Both the duct-based and ductless variety (which are way cheaper and easier to install) use removable filters that fit into the underside of the hood. Filter materials range from charcoal to cheaper aluminum.

The more you cook, the more gunk the filters capture. And without regular cleaning, they can get clogged with the grease of cooking experiments past. “And when you let it go, it just gets harder to clean as dust mixes with grease over time,” said Kuper. Even when it's clean, it's still kind of scary. Kuper recommends making a quick wipe-down on outside of the hood part of your daily kitchen cleaning routine. Dip a soft sponge or cloth (we've got plenty of favorites) in soapy water and simply wipe down the exterior. The filter doesn't need daily cleaning—just a monthly check up should do. “The more often you clean the filter,” said Kuper, “the easier it is to do.” There’s a litany of range hood filter cleaning tricks (everything from baking soda to Oxy Clean), but there’s one method that Kuper swears by. To clean a filter, pop it out from the range hood. Swish it up and down through a big bowl of hot, soapy water. Using a steady stream of water (or the sink’s sprayer attachment), rinse the filters, shake the filter vigorously, and allow it to air-dry before re-installing it under the hood.