Monthly Maintenance Reminder - Kitchen Stove Top

One of the most-utilized rooms in your home is the kitchen. Whether it’s cooking, eating, or simply lounging in with a warm drink after a long working day, we spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Sure, there are other rooms dedicated to providing a comfortable place to sit, such as the living room, bedroom, or lounge; but the kitchen, in its own special way, must also be comfortable for the household.

It’s also no secret that kitchens can get worn out and dirty as time goes on after all that use. Monthly maintenance of the room is therefore required to not only keep the place comfortable but also functional. Not all kitchen maintenance tasks are as clear-cut as one would think, and certain cleaning tasks go beyond the standard wiping off surfaces with a disinfectant wipe or organizing the cupboards.

Among the areas of your kitchen that get the dirtiest is the stove. Whether they are spills made during cooking or the general dirt that builds up over time, you’ll need to know your way around kitchen stove maintenance in order to keep the room tidy and clean. A handful of general tips can help you maintain and clean your kitchen stove to leave it immaculate.

Don’t Procrastinate with Spillage 

Why you should always clean spills on the spot.

Some of our favorite meals may take hours to cook, as well as plenty of prep work and cleaning up afterward. With everything you have to do, it can be somewhat difficult to motivate yourself to clean up the electric stove immediately after you take the pots and pans off the burners. But even if you’re really tired and can’t wait to dig into the food you’ve prepared, try making it a habit to clean up spills on the spot.

Let’s say you’re cooking something that’s very greasy. As you’re cooking, a few drops of the grease spill onto the surface of your stove. You think to yourself “that’s not too bad of a spill” or “I’ll clean it up later”. Unbeknownst to you, the longer you leave the spill there, the more time it has to seep into the metal surface of your stove and get much harder to clean than it actually is.

The smallest stains on your electric stovetop can stay there for a very long time, even after you’ve wiped them off. Not only can the stains on the stove burner release a very bad smell, but they also host a slew of nasty bacteria and other potentially harmful microbes. By wiping off the stains as soon as possible, you reduce the possibility of these outcomes.

Disinfectant to the Rescue

The benefits of disinfecting your stovetop.

Speaking of microbes and a bunch of other nasties invisible to the human eye, it is always a good idea to disinfect the stove as much as you possibly can. This doesn’t mean performing a deep cleaning every time you turn on the burners, but it is a good idea to do it at least once a week, especially if you’re an enthusiastic home cook and rarely order food.

You can purchase specialized kitchen disinfectant stove top cleaners that are fantastic at getting rid of germs and bacteria. However, even if you’ve run out of cleaning products and don’t feel like going to the store just for that, you can easily make one yourself with basic household ingredients.

Combine one part vinegar (preferably white, though others may also work) with two parts baking soda and just a bit of dish soap. Clean the surface of the stainless steel stove with this mixture, let it rest for around 20 minutes, then wipe it off with a damp cloth. This will not only get rid of those nasty smells caused by old stains from food spillage but will also thoroughly disinfect the gas stovetop, leaving it spotless.

Oven Door 

Why the oven door needs to be spotless.

You’ve probably seen your fair share of grimy oven windows. These tend to get very dirty if you do a lot of baking, as food cakes up on the surface of the interior. Ideally, you don’t want to have any amount of grime on the inside of your oven. Avery superficial layer, however, is not going to do much in terms of your oven’s performance or cleanliness. Although it would be great to keep the oven interior completely spotless, you won’t have to worry too much about a little grime.

But this isn’t the case with the oven door. While grime that is caked up on the inside of your oven only becomes a problem when there’s so much of it that it causes unpleasant smells, the oven door is a little more severe. The window on the oven door is used to peer inside to see if what you’re baking is finished or not. If the window is dirty and you can’t see inside, you’ll have to constantly open and close the oven door, which significantly reduces its longevity and can potentially damage it after so much use.

Instead, regularly clean the oven door window with a moist rag and a little baking soda. If you do plenty of baking, ideally, you’d do this weekly. However, for most homeowners, cleaning the oven door once a month is enough. Keep wiping the glass until all the grime comes off. You’ll have yourself a clean oven door when you can look inside and see everything clearly. This way, your stove, and oven are spotless from top to bottom. 

Kitchen Hood

How to clean the kitchen hood?

It’s easy to forget about the kitchen hood after cleaning up the stove and oven. It’s typically out of sight and you don’t really use it as any sort of work surface, unlike the electric stove burner and the inside of your oven. But the kitchen hood is also host to a lot of grime and dirt that builds up over time as you cook, whether it is off or on.

You already know that steam and smoke travel upwards, and that’s what the kitchen hood is for: to give the gaseous remnants of your cooking a channel by which they can be safely evicted from the kitchen. But as smoke and steam from the food prep below travels through the kitchen hood, it leaves behind residual dirt and grime that sticks to the outer surface as well as to the filter on its underside.

Start by giving the kitchen hood a general exterior wipe with a mixture of warm water and vinegar. This should get rid of the stains and give the surface of your hood much-needed disinfection. Also, make sure to be extra thorough with the area around the kitchen hood buttons, as this is the area of the hood you’re most likely to touch.

With the superficial cleaning and disinfection taken care of, it’s time to clean out the filters of the kitchen hood. These are located on the underside of the kitchen hood and can be very easily popped out of their place. It is generally not recommended to put the filter in a dishwasher, but cleaning the filter is a breeze regardless.

How easy it is to clean kitchen hood filters?

Place the filter into the kitchen sink or some kind of container. Put on a pair of rubber cleaning gloves and spray a few squirts of degreaser onto the filter. Then, boil some water in a kettle and start pouring it over the filter slowly, making sure that the mixture of boiling hot water and degreaser reaches every corner of the filter. Once that’s finished, rinse it and dry it off.

Once the filters are clean and dry, simply place them back on the underside of your kitchen hood and you have yourself completely cleaned-out filters. While the filters are being cleaned, you can also take the time to wipe off their slots and the interior area of the kitchen hood. However, be sure not to get too much moisture into the kitchen hood as it houses several kinds of electronics, be it the light of your hood, or the switch circuitry. A simple wipe with a slightly damp washcloth should be enough.