Non-Toxic Oven Cleaner

My family is wrapping up moving. Like big time, across an ocean moving! With moving comes great responsibilities--mostly cleaning, BOO!

Every time we do this--and we do this more than most as a military family--I swear the next time I'm just going to hire someone!  But then, every time, we think about what we need to do and how much time we have to do it and we convince ourselves "It's really not so much," and "We can spread it out," and "We got this." And every time we end up slaving and sweating in to the night, cleaning ceiling fans and base boards for the first time since we moved in, while roasting ourselves out with the oven's self-cleaning cycle stinking up the house burning off 2-3 years worth of stuck on grease!

This time, I'm happy to report, was different!  Well, a little different.  We came close to hiring someone, at least to clean the windows. Mind you, we live in Hawaii and we had 30 sets of jalousie windows. Don't know what those are? Check these babies out (I count that as 2):

Now, we do have a pressure washer, but those little slats just can't quite get a seal, so unless you want water spraying inside with all the gook it's supposed to be washing off, each one is going to need to be wiped down by hand! But, my husband's "let me just see how long 1 takes" turned in to me demonstrating a suggestion to make it go a little faster, magically evolved in to both of us and our 4 year old knocking out 80% before dinner! So, no we didn't hire anyone!  I mostly covered the mom stuff and kept the kids out of the house while the hubs cranked out most of the cleaning, a lot of which he finished while the packers were there and you can't do much else anyway! This was a great opportunity to put my clean cleaning products to the ultimate test and they didn't disappoint!

However, after several days of transition craziness and sleeping in strange beds, while largely on exclusive parent duty, I was begging for my turn in a quiet, empty house, even if it meant until I was scrubbing until I was sore! One of my tasks included the oven... so thanks for sticking around through the epilogue to finally get to the good stuff!

Now, like I mentioned before, we are leaving Hawaii, so even though it is December, it was still 80 degrees outside and our house had no air conditioning. The self-cleaning cycle is, let's just say, less than appealing. Plus, I didn't have the time to wait for it to cook and cool so I could wipe it out. That seriously takes 5-6 hours!  And nasty oven cleaner?  No thank you!  That aerosol can of chemicals won't come near my home again!  I whipped up a magic solution and was done in no time!

1/2-1 cup baking soda (less baking soda for a dirtier oven!)

1 capful Thieves Household Cleaner concentrate
a splash of water, 1 TBSP or so to thin it out and combine

Mix ingredients, scrub on with scouring pad, wipe off with a damp rag. DONE!

*Extra degreasing, deodorizing, stain fighting power of lemon essential oil or Citrus Fresh essential oil blend would be a nice touch here! 8-16 drops should do the trick.  I simply didn't have any on hand this time and it did a very good job!

OMG, this was SO super easy!  Even with the self-cleaning cycle, you still have to wipe it out. This method really required very little elbow grease to just wipe the gunk away.  There were a few spots I had to do twice, but even the tough spots went down! I was so blown away by how easy and how effective this was.  I may or may not have gone on Facebook right in the middle of the job to share how amazing it was! You can catch my video here and watch the magic in action!

The baking soda is an excellent, gentle abrasive and a great little deodorizing scrubber all on its own.  It makes for the perfect base for this product.  The Thieves Household Cleaner concentrate packs an incredibly strong degreasing punch! Not to mention, it's completely plant-and mineral based, non-toxic, and smells great! It is a Young Living exclusive and you can learn how to get it wholesale here. Check out these before-and-after pics. I think they speak loud and clear:

I will admit this is obviously more labor intensive than the self-cleaning cycle, simply due to the effort in covering the surface area. But it was really worth it to me to not have to run that cycle or use a harmful product. The labor involved really wasn't bad. And, in the end, I can confidently say that no brain cells (or any cells, for that matter) were harmed in the fantastic, get-your-security-deposit-back cleaning of my oven! And the rest of the house looked pretty good too ;)