Deep Clean Your Kitchen With These Kitchen Cleaning Hacks

Whether you have guests over or just your family at home, the kitchen will always be a busy room. This is where you prepare and cook your meals, where children go find food in the fridge or the cabinets, you wash your dishes and all. You can also find your trash bin here. As you prepare your buffet meals here, you are also left with a smorgasbord of dirt, slime, grime and germs. Since you are dealing with food in this area, it is necessary to keep it clean and germ-free. But with so many other rooms and things to clean, the kitchen’s cleanliness can be compromised.

You wouldn’t want to clean your kitchen haphazardly and not go over every corner or nook. But how can you do a deep cleaning of your kitchen without going to the pros?

We have gathered some of these kitchen cleaning hacks that we hope can help you in deep cleaning your kitchen:

1. Polish your kitchen sink with flour

Before you rush and pour flour all over your kitchen sink, there is a very important thing that you have to remember when doing this. Your kitchen sink has to be dried out first. You can do this after you are done washing dishes or pans in the sink. Clear out any food scraps or remnants left in the drain or anywhere in the kitchen sink. Then with a dry cloth or paper towel, wipe the kitchen sink dry. After wiping it dry, dump about a quarter cup of flour and wipe in circles with a sponge, cloth or non-abrasive pad. You will have a polished sink after.

2. Eliminate kitchen sink odor with baking soda

Do your kitchen sink sometimes smell like the sewage? While it could be an indicator of a potential plumbing system problem, it might also just be a simple case of spoiled food scraps that could be trapped down the drain pipes. To eliminate that stinky smell, you can grab your box of baking soda and pour 1 cup down the drain then follow it with the same volume of vinegar or lemon juice. Let that sit for 10 minutes and while waiting, you boil about 5 to 6 cups of water. Pour this down the drain to help any food particles move along down the drain.

3. Clean corners or slits with a butter knife

You would maybe ask how a butter knife could clear out dirt or grime from in-between tiles and countertops or narrow slits of some kitchen appliances. It would work when you wrap the butter knife in cloth or towel. You can dip it in a cleaning solution and go over the narrow slits or corners. You will then be able to remove any dirt that cannot be easily done when you just go over the area with a sponge or cloth.

4. Freshen your trash bin with activated carbon or cotton ball

Most of the things that you throw in your kitchen trash bin are food-related – torn packages, boxes, peels, and other food scraps. Even if you’ve left it in the bin for just a few hours, a distinct smell can already be produced and could reek your kitchen with stink. To get rid of the odor, you can drop a cotton ball drenched in essential oil to help mask the odor from your trash. Or, the most effective would be to throw in activated carbon or charcoal as they are known to absorb any foul smell.

5. Run your cleaning rag in the microwave

Our partner in cleaning our kitchen is the cleaning rag. While it was said that putting your sponges in the microwave is not an effective cleaning hack, the cleaning rag could bring in the difference. Just be sure to get your cleaning rag a bit damp and set the microwave to a setting that will not yield a scalding hot rag after. You would need it to be hot but not too hot for you to be able to handle. It will be more effective in taking out dirt and germs.

6. Clean your oven with ammonia and boiling water

If you have been actively using your oven to roast meat or bake cakes and pastries, your oven, in one way or another has smelled like burnt food all the time that you use it. That will be the case if you don’t clean it very often. But a simple method with the help of ammonia and boiling water, you can clean your oven even during your sleep.

To do that, you need to prepare your oven for the cleaning job that the ammonia and boiling water will do by preheating it to about 150 degrees F while putting a pot of water to boil on your stove top. When the desired temperature was reached, you can turn the oven off. Then, pour 1 cup of ammonia in a baking dish and place it on the top rack of your oven. Place the pot of boiling water at the bottom rack. Close the door and leave overnight. The morning after you can scrub all the softened grime and slime away by adding a dish soap in the ammonia that you used.

7. Clean range hood filter with baking soda

It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you haven’t cleaned your range hood filter ever. This is a task that’s often disregarded. But, for the range hood to be effective, you need to regularly clean its filter and remove any grease build-up that can compromise its effectiveness. Boil water in a large stock pot that can accommodate your filter or at least most of it. When it boils, add gradually about a half-cup of baking soda or a tablespoon at a time until everything is added. After, you place your filter into the pot of boiling water and baking soda. You can work half a part of the filter at a time. As the water boils, you will see the grime and grease start to surface. After you rinse the filter in your sink, running through the hot water from your faucet. Then air-dry your filter and make sure that it’s completely dry before replacing it in your range hood.

8. Clean up oil splatters in your kitchen with oil

You might be asking how can you remove oil with oil? But if you go back to your chemistry lessons, you would remember the general principle of solubility where non-polar solvents dissolve non-polar solutes and polar solvents dissolve polar solutes. You can use mineral oil in cleaning up the oil splatters. Put a drop or a couple onto a cloth or paper towel and wipe down the surface with the oil splatters. You will see that the grime or slime and other gunk just slide off. After, you go over the area that you cleaned with a clean dry cloth or paper towel. You buff the surface until only a thin layer of oil remains that make the surface shine a bit.

9. Deodorize your fridge with activated carbon

Organizing and cleaning your fridge is already hard work. But there is still that big chance that your fridge will still smell like spoiled food. That, no matter how many times you’ve scrubbed the surfaces inside the fridge, the smell still won’t go away. A hack that’s been tested and proven is the use of activated carbon. You can place it in a bowl or any small bin and put them on the top shelf or if you can, on every shelf. The activated carbon will absorb any unpleasant odor that will make your fridge seem unclean even if you have done a deep cleaning.

10. Always have DIY cleaning or disinfecting wipes ready

Cleaning wipes are a lifesaver. They can cut through messes and wipe sudden spills. But store-bought cleaning wipes can cost much and can add up to your trash. A simple DIY would be to use small pieces of cloth or rags from old shirts or towels plus a simple cleaning solution of rubbing alcohol, dish soap and essential oils.

You would need 2 cups of rubbing alcohol in a jar that comes with a lid. Mix 1 teaspoon of dish soap and about 20 drops of essential oil of your choice. Mix the solution by shaking the jar. Once mixed thoroughly, stack on the pieces of cloth onto the jar. Stack more until every piece is saturated. Then, replace the lid on the jar, turn it upside down for another saturation process. Then, it’s ready to use and can be washed and re-used.