Oven Cleaning Without Harsh Chemicals (AKA I Could Use Some Of Those Harsh Chemicals About Now) Part 2

I woke up this morning ready to tackle the oven!  Okay, so, I actually woke up this morning with a smack in the face by my affectionate toddler and was ready to turn over and go back to sleep. But then I remembered the oven and realized I should get up and take it on.

This is what it looked like when I peeked in this morning.

Eeeewwwwww.  The grime and grease is just oozing up.  I am not looking forward to scrubbing this at all.  I made sure I was wearing something I did not care about and dove in.

Now, all of the Pinterest pins I have pinned (mouthful), say how easy the grime and goo comes right off after a night of soaking in baking soda and vinegar.  I am here to attest that it does NOT just wipe right up.  It took some serious elbow grease to get this junk up.  A TON of elbow grease.  My elbows were gushing grease by the end of this.  Maybe if I cleaned my oven on a regular basis, the light gunk would just come right off, but 6 years of gunk took some muscle.

Also, while scrubbing, I realized that a lot of baking soda clumps fell through two slats in the bottom of the oven floor.  And there appeared to be two screws at the back of the oven that allowed me to remove the bottom of my oven.  So, I did. 

Again with the EEWWWWW!  Actually, it's not as bad as the rest of the oven was.  I wish I would have discovered that this part comes off earlier though.  That way I wouldn't have had to stick my entire upper body into the oven to scrub.

This part was pretty clean when I pulled it out since I had spent nearly two hours on the floor scrubbing the daylights out of it.  This is where, if you remember from yesterday, the giant pool of grease was charred on.  Not bad now.

Just when I thought I was done, I remembered that I have the racks soaking in my bathtub. 

I used the following recipe from Picklee.com to clean my oven racks.

This worked amazingly well.  Again, it would probably have worked even better if I had regularly cleaned my oven and racks prior.  But MOST the gunk came right off after soaking the racks in this solution overnight. 

I also used a variation on this recipe for my stove top racks (or whatever they are called).  

I used one dryer sheet for each and a squirt of Dawn in a plastic bag with some hot water.  I let them soak overnight and then scrubbed them gently with the dryer sheets.  Worked like a charm.

Oh, and I also discovered the the top part of my stove lifts up so you can clean around the actual burners!!  Who knew?!  Probably everyone but me! 

Again, ewwwwwww!!!  And what have I been cooking?! 

So, this "little" project of cleaning my smoky oven turned into a full day of scrubbing, removing parts of my oven I did not know could be removed, and generally cursing whoever made this mess in the first place (me).

But it was all worth it.  My oven is once again clean and ready for use!  Here are the "after" photos!

Under the range top.

Top of the range.

Inside of oven, Giant charred spot is GONE!

All done!

I could not be happier with the results!  Especially since I used it to bake Chicken Parmesan and it worked wonderfully!!