How to Clean an Oven Quickly (in 5 Minutes)

The oven is one of the most used appliances in your house. But when it comes to cleaning your oven, it is one of the least enjoyable housekeeping tasks you have to do. For this reason, most people put off doing it until the oven is emitting horrible smells.

To make the job much easier, we have come up with a simple, 7-step guide for how to clean your oven that takes just 5 minutes of work.

But before we explain the 7 steps, let’s start with determining how often you should clean your oven.

How Often Should You Clean Your Oven?

If you use your oven regularly (i.e., 5 times or more a week), you should clean it out every 3 months or so. If you use your oven only a couple of times a week, you can probably get away with only cleaning it a couple of times a year.

But if your oven starts to emit strong odors or smells like something is burning inside, then you should clean it straight away to stop the bad odor from stinking up your house.

7 Steps to Clean Your Oven in 5 Minutes

Our oven cleaning process takes just 5 minutes of work – broken up into two 2.5 minutes of work with a 12-hour break in between. Better still, this is an all-natural process that only requires you to have some baking soda and white vinegar in the pantry. You will also need a bucket, rubber gloves, a spray bottle, and a couple of clean cloths.

The best time to clean your oven is just before you go to bed so you can leave it soaking overnight.

Let’s get started.

1. Get Prepared

Before you start the cleaning process, make sure your oven is switched off at the wall, or if that’s not possible, turn the circuit breaker off. Once the power is switched off, you can remove the oven racks and soak them in hot, soapy water (or some baking soda if you prefer) in a sink.

2. Make the Cleaning Solution

To make the cleaning solution, you simply need to mix together ½ a cup of baking soda with a few tablespoons of water. When mixed, this will form a paste that you will spread onto the surfaces of the oven.

3. Spread the Cleaning Solution

The next step is to put on a pair of rubber gloves and then spread the cleaning paste over every surface of the interior of your oven. Make sure you cover all of the tough-to-reach spaces and the glass door.

When you spread the paste, it will most likely go brown due to the grease in the oven. This is fine; you don’t need to worry about it.

4. Leave It Overnight

Now it’s time to take a well-deserved 12-hour break – this is best done overnight so your oven won’t be out of service when you want to cook dinner.

If you wish, at this point you can give the racks a quick scrub and rinse and then leave them to dry overnight, or you can leave them soaking overnight and rinse them off in the morning.

And that’s the first 2.5 minutes of work done!

5. Wipe the Oven Out

After 12 hours, you can wipe your oven out with a damp cloth. If there is any hard debris on any of the oven surfaces, you can use a scraper to scrape it off. Make sure you wipe as much of the solution up as you can, and don’t forget to get into the hard-to-reach places.

6. Spray the Oven with Vinegar

Once you have wiped the oven out, you need to put a few drops of white vinegar into an empty spray bottle, followed by about ½ a bottle of water. You can then spray all the surfaces of the oven and then wipe it out with a damp cloth. Make sure you get all of the baking soda residue out of the oven – this might mean spraying and wiping the oven out a few times until it’s completely clean.

8. Put Your Oven Back Together

The final step is to put the oven racks back into the oven and then turn the power back on. Before putting the oven racks back in, make sure they are nice and clean and dry. And that’s it! Your oven should now be lovely and clean. To avoid your oven getting overly dirty, make sure you give it a regular clean – as the more you clean it, the easier it is to do.