How to Clean your Stove Top Without Harsh Cleansers

You don't need harsh cleansers to get your stove top clean. You can use a little soaking, and a little assist from baking soda, to get most grime off your stove top. This should work well to clean glass stove tops as well as cleaning porcelain stove tops.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A Rag
• Water
• Baking Soda
• A plastic knife or spoon, or a plastic scouring pad
• Patience

1. Since this method uses water, be extra careful using it on an open burner electric stove. While I've never gotten an electric shock myself from doing this, water conducts electricity easily. If you want to try this method anyway, be sure to use less water and more patience. (That is; wring out the rag more thoroughly, and don't let water drip into or onto any part of the stove that you don't normally wipe with a damp rag.)

2. Soak a dishrag with very warm water, and don't wring it out. Just squeeze it a little so it isn't dripping too badly. It should be dripping just a little. Lay this rag over the cooked-on grime. If the grime has been there more than a day or two, you could use soapy water, or you could skip to step 5.

3. Let the rag soak the grimy spot for several minutes or more. After it has soaked for a bit, pick up the rag and wring it out in the sink. Wipe up the grimy area as you would a fresh spill. The smaller and thinner grime should clean up, but the heavier bits will still be there. However, even those parts will probably be softened.

4. You may be able to scrape or scour the worse up with the plastic knife or scouring pad -- but if it won't come off with gentle scrubbing, you could scratch your cook top. So, repeat steps two and tree.

5. For tougher grime, get the spot wet, and generously sprinkle on baking soda. Soda reacts with the tougher and greasier bits and loosens them up. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes at least. (You can also put a wet cloth over the spot, but make sure you don't accidentally wipe off the soda while placing it.)

6. After letting it sit for a while, use the cloth to scrub the stove top. The soda will act as a gentle scouring powder. You should, at this point, be able to simply wipe up the rest of the grime, but really tough spots may need some scrubbing with the plastic scrubber, or another treatmet with baking soda.
   
   If these steps don't work, odds are the harsh cleanser won't either, but you can always give that a try now.

Tips & Warnings

• As mentioned in step 1, be extra careful using drippy water around an older electric stove top.

[grove]

on 2/27/2009 Never would have thought of this. Thanks!

[L1onherd]

on 2/24/2009 Great tips!