Oven Cleaning-the Make Do and Mend way….

I had a bit of a strop recently (most unlike me…!!) at the state of our house.

It is a mess. A big mess.

I have no-one to blame but myself. Well, and the lovely hubby. And quite possibly the Smalls too….

The Smalls are the best at making mess, I am not far behind, and hubby is actually quite tidy.

But NONE of us are good at tidying away.

I keep waiting for the ‘tidy-up fairy’ who would come and tidy up while I was at school when I lived at home, but someone must have forgotten to tell her I’ve moved, so she never comes. And I am still always slightly disappointed when we go out leaving the house a mess, and come back in and the house is still a mess….

So the lovely hubby took a couple of days off recently, and we farmed the Smalls out, and had a big tidy up.

But once you start, it’s hard to stop, and before I knew it, I was CLEANING THE OVEN….

ARRGHHHHHHH!!!!

The ‘before’ shot

I had put one of those clever pull out liners in the bottom, so the inside wasn’t too bad, just the door really. I am ashamed to admit that this is the first time I (or anyone else for that matter!) have cleaned the oven since we moved into the house over 2 years ago….

We didn’t have any oven cleaner in the house, and as this is My Make Do and Mend Year, I thought I should follow through, and give the homemade approach to cleaning a go….

This is what I was armed with:

And these….

I mixed the vinegar and bicarb into a paste, and then painted onto the oven door using my best party brush…

A lot of rubbing/scouring with steel wool little bit of elbow grease later, it was looking much better, but still quite smeary. I had tried polishing it with vinegar, but was starting to get cross, so I handed over to hubby at this point, who whipped out his secret weapon….

And this was the result…

Needless to say, I am now full of resolve to clean it much more regularly, so it will be easier…

But we all know I won’t 😉