Spring Cleaning Tips For Your Kitchen Appliances

Springtime is finally here, and what better way to celebrate than with a little spring cleaning? There’s no better time to reorganize and refresh your home than the dawn of spring. After all, spring is all about refreshing and restarting. Below you’ll find some quick and easy (and some eco-friendly) tips for cleaning and freshening up your appliances just in time for spring.

If it’s not too chilly, crack open your windows for a little fresh air, pull on your yellow rubber gloves, and turn up the radio… It’s spring cleanin’ time!

Refrigerator 

Using warm water and white distilled vinegar on a wash cloth, give the interior of your fridge a vigorous scrub down. This will remove old food residue, burgeoning mold, and remove any odors. You might also want to remove the dust from the coils beneath and behind your fridge to prevent further build-up. Dusty coils can cause your fridge to work overtime, therefore costing you more money. Don’t forget to reorganize the contents of your fridge and throw out any lingering left-overs while you’re at it! Trust us, no one is going to eat those year-old frozen Brussels sprouts.

Dishwasher

You might think that every time you run your dishwasher that you’re cleaning it, but residue and grime can still linger long after the rinse cycle of your last dishwasher load. Using a dishwasher safe bowl or cup, set white distilled vinegar on the top rack and run on normal. The vinegar will bust through any residue or odors left lingering in your machine. Also, don’t forget to clean the rubber seal around your unit to remove any dirt or dust that’s been hanging out.

Microwave

It’s no surprise how dirty a microwave can get, considering half the time the soup you’re heating up ends up splattering on the ceiling. Now just imagine that every time you heat something up to eat, all that old, crusty food residue is contaminating your meal. Yuck! It’s a good thing disinfecting your microwave is easy. Just take a microwave safe bowl and fill it with one part water, one part lemon juice. Heat up the concoction for 5-10 minutes so that the steam condenses into water droplets on the interior walls of your unit. When finished, carefully remove the hot bowl and, using a washcloth, wipe down your homemade lemon solution for a clean, disinfected microwave.

Oven and Stove

Oftentimes the self-cleaning option on your oven just doesn’t do the trick. For a complete clean, remove your trays and racks and soak them thoroughly in warm water with soap or lemon. You can take a warm, damp washcloth to the interior of the oven to remove excess residue, grease, or burnt bits. As for your stove top, remove burners, knobs, and hooded vents and soak them vigorously in hot water to remove all the grease and grime.  Using a little warm water and baking soda, wipe down the rest of the stove top to kill off any remaining bacteria and to see your stove top shine!

Spring cleaning can give you a fresh start, and though many people tend to focus on reorganizing their closet space, vacuuming the carpets, and getting the pool cleaned, not everyone remembers to give their appliances a good disinfecting. But a clean appliance is a healthy appliance, one that can save you energy and, in the long-run, money.