So after my oven caught fire and an embarrassing run-in with the firemen, I decided to clean my oven.
Dirty oven about to be cleaned with baking soda
But over my dead body would i use those toxic oven cleaning foams. Environmental toxicity and aerosol can aside, I’m fricking worried about the health side-effects. I once borrowed a can from a neighbour and 24hrs later, I could still smell the toxic odour in my kitchen. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be contaminating my food, or worse, could the leftover fumes explode with the heat in the oven?
I have read in the past that a simple baking soda paste (baking soda + water) could do the trick if you let it soak overnight.
So I decided to give it a try…
I took out a box of baking soda, poured it into a big bowl and added enough water until I got a consistency much like icing sugar.
Baking soda paste oven cleaner (Baking soda + water)
I spread it over the mess in the oven then went to bed.
Spreading the baking soda paste in the oven
Technically, one night is all it takes, but I have been so busy that I didn’t get to cleaning it until one week later.
Here it is. The baking soda hardened and it was super easy to break off. It absorbed the burnt food and turned it brown. For the real hardened pieces, I scrubbed them off with an SOS pad.
Scrubbing the paste off the oven
After all the dried paste bits were removed, I scrubbed the bottom with an SOS pad then rinsed with a cloth.
Voilà. A clean new oven. My oven won’t catch on fire again and the firemen will no longer be needed chez moi. Although, that wasn’t such a bad thing!
I’ll be honest, I didn’t actually think this would work. In the back of my mind, I was wondering what else I could try to complete this post. But low and behold, it did work. And it was easy.
And best of all, this was all done naturally with ingredients I already had in my house.
Your turn – have you ever tried this? Have any other natural cleaning methods that worked on your oven?
- Naturally cleaned oven thanks to a baking soda paste and an SOS pad
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Urban Green Girl 
Baking soda is wonderful for ovens, that is all I use. It even managed to clean a horrendously dirty oven in a rental house that I moved into! It even works if you just put baking sode in the oven and spray it with water, just as easy as the paste just different route.
By: veganverve on July 28, 2009
at 3:22 am
Thank you for this blog, keep up the informative posting. I will be sure to reference it when needed throughout our website once we add our resources section. Keep up the great blogging and thanks again.
By: System Built Housing on March 17, 2010
at 6:42 pm
Your welcome. I’ve have posted this comment on my new blog http://www.urbangreengirl.com as I’m no longer hosted on wordpress. Pls reference the new address. Thanks.
By: UrbanGreenGirl on July 9, 2010
at 10:10 pm
Thanks for the post on baking soda. Your concerns about the fumes, contamination, health effects and explosions are EXACTLY the same concerns I have been having since I used oven cleaner in the last 24 hours only to realise what a big mistake I have made. Makes you wonder how many other people feel the same way we do. I’m going have to slip it into all my conversations casually when I talk to family and friends and make sure they never use those poisons ever again 🙂 x
By: missy on July 20, 2010
at 6:02 pm
thank you soooo much. I was looking for the sos oven cleaner pads they are so hard to find. They are the only product i’ve used that doen’t have fumes. But now I am going to use the baking soda and water method.
paula, sc
By: paula vinci on October 10, 2011
at 2:53 pm