A Brilliant Tip for the One Part You’re Missing During Oven Cleaning

In an effort to enhance my children’s at-home education, I enrolled them in “home economics,” aka helping me with my deep cleaning this summer. But there was one task I couldn’t include them in, and couldn’t let myself off the hook for any longer: a long overdue cleaning of our oven. (Don’t ever think that just because I write about cleaning and organizing I’m good at getting it done all the time.)

My oven was an absolute disaster. I’m cooking at home more than ever, but it had been so long since I last cleaned it. I wanted the oven to look like it did when it was brand new eight years ago.

I got the inside clean in no time with commercial oven cleaner (it worked great, but the smell has me resolved to cleaning more often with gentler cleaners instead). Then I turned my attention to the drawer beneath the oven’s main compartment. To get to the corners better, I pulled the drawer all the way out — and that’s when, to my surprise and delight, I discovered there was no surface under the warming drawer, only the kitchen floor!

I had uncovered a hidden trick that would let me vacuum and clean the floor beneath the oven without pulling it away from the wall. Mind blown.

The floor underneath your oven may only very rarely get cleaned, or maybe never has been. (That’s ok!) In addition, if you have a smaller kitchen, you may not even have any room to fully pull out your oven or get behind it without sprawling across the counter for access. Plus an oven is heavy to pull out and push back. All this is to say that if you think you need to unplug the oven and pull it out in order to reach the space on the floor, it’s no wonder you put it off.

But, as I discovered, the floor beneath your oven unit is far more accessible than meets the eye. Getting to it is as easy as pulling out a dresser drawer. Once the oven drawer is out, you can use a vacuum cleaner to clean up dust and dirt. And if you encounter any sticky areas, spray them with all-purpose cleaner to help soften them. Scrape them up with a plastic scraper, if necessary, or wipe them away with a rag. Then let the area dry thoroughly before replacing the drawer.

There’s a lot of gross stuff hiding beneath your oven. Addressing the mess not only gives you a cleaner kitchen, but it prevents pests from finding and feasting on crumbs and creating an even bigger problem for you. Cleaning the floor beneath your oven allows you to check one of those never-done chores off your list and it’s easy enough to add to your monthly cleaning routine.

I came away from that oven-cleaning session with a nearly spotless oven and my newfound secret under-oven cleaning trick that I suspect will influence my kitchen cleaning life forever.

This post originally appeared on Apartment Therapy. See it there: Your Oven is Hiding a Feature That Makes it So Much Easier to Clean