Spring Cleaning-Day 2

Day 2: Kitchen

Finishing up the cleaning today.

Clean up from most recent meal, including washing dishes and putting away leftovers. Fill ½ your sink with hot, soapy water for soaking or using for washing down things. 5-10 minutes

Clean the inside of the stove. Hopefully you ran the self-clean yesterday or you’ll be pulling on the gloves and getting the oven cleaner out. This is a yucky and annoying job, but get it done and keep it clean and it won’t be so bad next time! Soft scrub, a Magic Eraser and a nylon scrubber are also useful for this job.  If you ran the self clean cycle, take a damp towel and wipe the inside ashes.  For the racks, I put mine in the sink (you could take them outside as well) sprayed with oven cleaner and then after cleaning the oven I went over them with a Magic Eraser. There’s also heavier duty cleaning instructions online involving garbage sacks and vinegar, etc. If you have a door with a window that stuffs gotten into, you can usually take off the front of the oven through the door handle. Clean out the oven door while you are at it and clean out the inside of that warming or pan drawer on the bottom if you’ve got one.   Wipe down the stove top, using cleaner for your stove and/or cleaning those little bowls under the burners (you can buy brand new ones at the dollar store/Target… for spring cleaning if they are really bad, I’d recommend just buying new ones)  Then put the knobs back on that you let soak in dishwasher detergent yesterday.  Pull out the oven and wash all the sides of it and sweep and hand scrub the floor underneath, wash the sides of the counters next to the oven and wash the wall behind the oven. You may need a magic eraser and degreaser for the wall. Push the oven back into place. 30-90 minutes

Wipe down the front all the way from the counter to the floor of the dishwasher. Then, open up the dishwasher (best to do this right after you unload it)  Check the filter to make sure there’s no food trapped in there, if there is, clean out the filter.  Then the edge of the door… the inside of the dishwasher stays pretty clean (if you have a hard water issue, etc. look online to find ways of dealing with it- I use Vinegar instead of JetDry rinse so my dishwasher gets rinsed out with vinegar after each load). The edges around the door, though? Nope! Disgusting!!! Scrub with a scrubby sponge and some cleaner all the way around and make sure to get those gaskets  (rubber stuff) around the edge.  20 minutes.

You cleaned the outside of the fridge yesterday, now it’s time to tackle the inside. (Note: if you have an extra fridge or extra freezer, now is a great time to clean that out as well, esp since you may want to redistribute food between the two).  Start top to bottom.  You need some all-purpose cleaner or vinegar, a few rags, a scrubby sponge or Magic Eraser and a trash bag.  ANYTHING expired should be thrown out. Just do it. Go through the freezer first.  Start at the top and shelf by shelf pull everything out. Wipe down the shelf, check for any expired food, put food back on shelf. If you want to organize by type, etc you can pull ALL your freezer food out at once, wipe everything out and then put in the way you want it.  If you have OCD and the rest of your family does not, you can use your labelmaker to label each shelf.  Suggestions: ready made meals, convenience foods, frozen drinks, frozen fruit, frozen veggies, frozen meat, frozen treats. Do the same thing in the refridgerator. Pay special attention to the door and all those condiments. If you throw something out and you use it regularily, put it on your shopping list. Wash out those produce drawers. Throw out anything expired or gross. Wash any food storage containers you emptied out and any recycling. 30-90 minutes

Put back the oven hood screens that you washed yesterday and hopefully dried overnight.  Wash down the outsides of the lower cabinets (use a degreaser an Magic Eraser and toothbrush if it’s pretty bad) and pantry.  Don’t worry about the baseboards, we’ll get those when we wash the walls. 30 minutes

Wash any walls that haven’t been scrubbed yet. If you have spare paint, cover any spots needing it once your wiping down has dried. 10 minutes

 That's it for today!