How To Take Off Years Of Grease On Stove and Microwave

Disclosure: Some of the pictures you will see below are horrific. And yes, I let my stove and microwave get that bad. Yes, I am human. And no, I am not a clean freak...obviously :)

 We made the mistake of buying all black appliances when we moved into our house. I don't know why no one told us that they would show grease like crazy, but they do. And it's just horrible and half near impossible to get clean. I shared with you my method of removing grease using baby oil/mineral oil. This still works wonderfully, but I was hesitant to use it on my stove. I don't know why, just oil and fire didn't seem like a great combination for me. So, our stove has remained only touched by dish soap...the cuts grease like no one's business dish soap. Haha...yeah right :) They haven't seen my stove! Over the past years, grease has continually gunked itself onto the range top, particularly bad in one spot, as you can see from the top picture above. That's like 5 years worth of grease caked on there. We scrub and scrub and scrub and nothing would take it off....until now :) Meet my new best friend:

 I was doing laundry the other day and the back of the box caught my eye. It said it would clean almost anything in the kitchen. I figured, hey, why not give it a try? What harm could it do?

I can't tell you how impressed I was with this! I just grabbed a dish rag, wet it and poured some baking soda on it.

 I then took the rag and started rubbing. The grease was coming off like no one's business. And it doesn't scratch. It was awesome. This part of the stove hasn't looked this nice since the first time we used it. You can see on the left where all the gunk is and the right where it's nice and shiny (minus the knobs). Now, if any of you have yellow labs, you might understand the dog hair on grease deal I'm dealing with here. It's horribly disgusting. I have better pictures of it that would just make you cringe...black and yellow shedding dogs do not mix either with clothes or appliances.

 While scrubbing, I noticed that if it stopped working or I was scrubbing harder than before to try to get rid of a spot, I just poured on some more baking soda and started up again. The fresh baking soda does wonders for cutting through the tough grease.

Since it worked so well on my stove, I gave it a try on my microwave. Like magic!

The baking soda does leave a white residue, so after the grease was removed, I shined the surface back up using some window cleaner.

Check out the back of your baking soda next time you get a chance! The uses for it are amazing. It cleans sinks, fridges, counters, stainless steal, showers, toilets, tubs, tile....etc etc. And of course, it has great deodorizing properties.