Nobody wants to clean their oven. It’s a time-consuming chore, but if you don’t regularly clean the oven, the burnt food continues to release carcinogens into whatever you cook. While conventional oven cleaners do the job, most of them contain extremely toxic chemicals. These toxins pose a threat to your lungs and your skin, provided you aren’t wearing protective gloves. Luckily, you don’t have to harm your body if you want to keep your oven clean because we have a natural oven cleaner. 

Why You Shouldn’t Use Chemical Oven Cleaner

Chemical oven cleaners typically contain lye and ammonia. Did you know that lye can decompose carcasses? Well, now you do. If these chemicals come in contact with the skin, they can remove layers of skin similar to a burn. The inhalation of the chemicals can actually be more harmful to your system. When you inhale the fumes from these chemicals, they can enter the lungs and cause light-headedness, breathing troubles, throat swelling, and even abdominal pain. Some people have even reported fainting, blood in the stool, or burns in the esophagus after using oven cleaners like Mr. Muscle or Easy-Off. Some of the ingredients, including glycol ethers, monoethanolamine (MEA), and alkyl phenol ethoxylates (APEs) can even damage the reproductive system. 

Baking Soda For Oven Cleaning

Baking soda is an excellent oven cleaner because it has an abrasive texture, which helps to scrub your oven clean. The nahocolite, which contains sodium bicarbonate, in baking soda aids the cleaning process. Now, baking soda can clean the oven on its own, but it’s easier to clean the oven when you add other ingredients. 

Vinegar And Orange Essential Oil For Oven Cleaning

This combination is the one-two punch knockout combo that gets rid of all grime and gunk in your oven. Both vinegar and orange essential oil contain antibacterial and antimicrobial properties, helping to soften the grime so you don’t have to scrub as hard. The orange essential oil adds a beautiful scent that isn’t harmful to your body. It’s quite pleasant, actually!

Castile Soap For Oven Cleaning

Castile soap is a nontoxic soap that can be used to clean your body or your house. It’s a plant-based soap that has been know to clean kitchen tile, bathroom countertops, stovetops, showers, walls, and now the inside of your oven. Combined with the other natural disinfecting products in this, you’ll surely be able to have an easy time cleaning your oven. 

We don’t encourage you to go out and buy natural oven cleaning products because baking soda and vinegar are way more effective. Just like any other oven cleaning endeavor, you have have to use a little elbow grease to remove the built-up gunk. The recipe for our natural oven cleaner is below. 

DIY Homemade Oven Cleaner

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons liquid castile soap
• 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• 6 drops orange essential oil
• 1 + 1/3 cups baking soda 
• Water

Instructions:

• Add the castile soap, vinegar, orange essential oil, and baking soda to a medium-sized glass bowl and whisk. 
• Slowly pour water into the bowl as you whisk. The goal is to form a thick paste, so don’t add too much water.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow this mixture to sit in the bowl for at least eight hours. 
• Once that time has passed, don your cleaning gloves, get a sponge and clean water, and scrub your oven until it sparkles like stars in the night sky. And you thought oven cleaning couldn’t be poetic!

Vincent Stevens

Vincent Stevens is the senior content writer at Dherbs. As a fitness and health and wellness enthusiast, he enjoys covering a variety of topics, including the latest health, fitness, beauty, and lifestyle trends. His goal is to inform people of different ways they can improve their overall health, which aligns with Dherbs’ core values. He received his bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Redlands, graduating summa cum laude. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.