How to Clean a Non-Self-Cleaning Oven (Without Harsh Chemicals!)

Living in a bustling city like Chicago, keeping your home spotless can feel like a never-ending battle. Between work, family, and trying to enjoy everything the city has to offer, deep cleaning tasks like the oven often get pushed to the bottom of the list. But a clean home is a happy, healthy home, and sometimes you need a strategy—or a little help.

If your oven has seen better days and is covered in baked-on grease and grime, you might be dreading the cleanup. The thought of heavy-duty chemicals, gloves, and masks is enough to make anyone procrastinate. But what if you could get that oven sparkling using simple, effective methods you probably already have at home? Let’s dive in.

Why Regular Oven Cleaning Matters in Your Chicago Home

Cleaning your oven isn’t just about aesthetics. Over time, food spills and grease cook onto the surfaces, becoming carbonized. This can cause smoke when you’re cooking, affect the flavor of your food, and even set off your smoke alarm. Regular maintenance prevents this and keeps your kitchen safer and more pleasant. For many busy Chicagoans, finding time for this is tough. That’s where a reliable cleaning service near me can be a lifesaver, handling the deep cleaning so you don’t have to.

Your Simple, Non-Toxic Cleaning Toolkit

You don’t need a cabinet full of harsh products. Here’s what you’ll need for this natural clean:

• Baking Soda & Dish Soap: This duo creates a powerful, non-toxic paste.
• White Vinegar: For a final rinse to cut grease and polish.
• Microfiber Cloths & Paper Towels
• A Scraper: An old credit card or a dedicated tool works.
• A Heavy-Duty Scrub Pad (like a Scotch-Brite pad)
• Newspaper or an Old Towel: To protect your floor.

This approach is perfect for those who prefer a natural home. But if the task feels too big, remember you can always schedule a cleaning with professionals who bring the right tools and expertise.

Step-by-Step: Conquer That Oven Grime

1. Prep Your Space

Start by removing the oven racks and the drawer at the bottom. You can clean the racks separately in the bathtub. Line the floor in front of the oven with newspaper to catch falling debris. This prep work makes the main job much cleaner and easier.

2. The Initial Scrape-Down

Look inside your oven. You’ll likely see a mix of loose crumbs and hardened gunk. Use your scraper to gently loosen and remove as much of the hardened buildup as possible. Wipe it out with a paper towel. This initial step means less scrubbing later!

3. Apply Your Cleaning Paste

Mix four parts baking soda with one part dish soap and one part water to form a thick paste. Using your hands or a spatula, spread this paste over the interior surfaces of the oven—the walls, floor, and ceiling. Avoid getting any paste on the heating elements or fans. Let this paste sit for at least 30 minutes to break down the grease.

4. Time to Scrub

After the paste has sat, it’s time to scrub. Use your heavy-duty scrub pad to work the paste into all surfaces. For stubborn spots, use your scraper again. This is the most labor-intensive part, requiring some good old-fashioned elbow grease. If you’d rather leave the hard scrubbing to others, consider a professional home cleaning service to get your space cleaned thoroughly.

5. The Rinse & Shine

Baking soda can leave a residue. To remove it, dampen a microfiber cloth with water and wipe down the entire interior. Follow up with a second cloth lightly dampened with white vinegar. The vinegar will cut any remaining grease and leave a streak-free shine. This final step makes all the difference!

6. Don’t Forget the Window & Drawer

For the oven door window with stubborn stains, a product like Bar Keeper’s Friend on a damp scrub pad works wonders (only on the glass!). For the drawer, give it a good vacuum, scrub with soapy water, rinse, and dry completely before sliding it back in.

Oven Cleaning: Maintenance vs. Crisis Mode

Are you a regular maintenance person, or do you wait until you see smoke? Be honest! For most of us in the hustle of city life, it’s easy to let these tasks slide until they become urgent. The key is finding a system that works for you, whether it’s setting a quarterly reminder or deciding to book an appointment with a trusted Chicago cleaning company for a periodic refresh.

When to Call in the Pros

While this DIY method is effective, some situations call for expert help. If your oven hasn’t been cleaned in years, if you have physical limitations, or if you simply value your time more, it’s worth investing in fast cleaning services. A professional team can provide deep cleaning help for your entire kitchen or home, delivering results that go beyond the surface. Looking for someone to clean my apartment thoroughly? That’s where specialized cleaning services in Chicago like Jikas come in.

If you’ve got a non-self cleaning oven that’s seen better days and really needs a good cleaning, you might be ready to pull out those heavy duty chemicals and wear heavy duty gloves, a face mask, the whole thing. You don’t have to do that. I’ve got a technique that you can use to clean your non-selfing oven and get rid of that grease and grime and gunky buildup so that it looks amazing and you don’t have to use the harsh stuff. By the way, if you’re new here, my name is Melissa Maker. I am an accidental cleaning expert. I’ve been here on YouTube since 2012 sharing the most efficient and effective ways to get your cleaning done right the first time. So, if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe. Oh, and give this video a thumbs up if you like fresh homemade pizza right out of the oven, gluten-free or otherwise. Cleaning your oven really is a choose your own adventure type cleaning task because you can dial it up or dial it down as much as you want. In other words, depending on how much effort you want to put in, you can really go full force or you can kind of squeak by. So, today I’m just going to be showing you how to clean the cavity of the oven itself, but a few things I want to point out. First and foremost, cleaning the oven really should happen on a fairly regular basis. I can’t tell you, I can’t like prescribe an exact amount of time. You’ll know based on how frequently you cook and how frequently things bubble over, but essentially when you start to see spills and, you know, crusty buildup at the bottom of the oven, it’ll eventually cook and cook and cook until it becomes carbonized or like blackened. And then what’ll happen is you’ll start to get smoke when you’re cooking. It’ll affect the flavors of your food. You’ll kind of think your kitchen’s on fire. So that’s why it’s really important to kind of stay on top of this and make sure that you’re cleaning your oven when you start to see and smell those cues. Now, when you’re actually in the oven, aside from removing the racks, you want to be really careful that you’re not getting product into fans if you have a convection oven or into any of the burners or coils or heating elements that are inside your oven either. You actually want to be really careful around that because you don’t want to cause any damage. So, when you’re cleaning the inside cavity, just work your way around that. Now, let’s talk about in between those two glass panes in the oven door. They are they are a pain. Okay. And the thing is, you can’t really clean them. I mean, you can you will just void your warranty if you do it because you’ve got to take the door apart. And oven manufacturers don’t like when we try to do that stuff ourselves. Now, you can kind of jimmy rig something where you put paper towel over a fly sweatter and stick it up. Fine. If you want to try that, you can. I’m not going to demo that in this video because I don’t have time for it. But if you want to try that, you certainly can. Just keep in mind, don’t take your oven door apart. You will void the warranty. You’ll probably notice here that I have some very simple cleaning products and easy to find household cleaning tools. That’s because oven cleaning doesn’t have to be complicated and it doesn’t have to be harsh. You just have to know what you’re doing and have a plan of attack. I’m not a firm believer in using heavyduty oven cleaning chemicals. First of all, I’m not totally comfortable using them. And second of all, I don’t want those chemicals in my oven that will then cook food that me and my family will eat. So that’s why I like to keep it pretty simple. I’m going to give you a rundown of the things that I have here uh so that you can grab them and clean along with me. First and foremost, got some paper towel. I’ve got a microfiber cloth and vinegar. This is for after the fact. We’re not using this during the cleaning. I’ve then got dish soap and baking soda. That’s right. I bought it from the bulk food store. Um that we’re going to be using as our main product for cleaning the oven. I’ve got a scraper. You can use a windshield scraper, old credit card, or one of these. I’ll link it for you down below. Then I’ve got a ScotchBrite heavy duty scrub pad. Love these for this task. And I’ve oops. And I’ve also got some steel wool, which I probably won’t use, but it’s always good to have on hand in case you need to level up a bit. Oh, and I also have some newspaper, which I’ll be putting on the floor to catch all the dirt. Today, I’m also going to be cleaning the drawer and the area under the drawer. So, I will start by removing everything from the drawer. And this is just good general practice because when you’re cleaning your oven, you might get some liquid dripping in. Next up, I’m removing the oven racks as well. You can clean those in the bathtub. I’ve got that video for you linked below. Now, lining the area with newspaper is a good idea. It just saves you from having to do additional cleanup afterward. Looking inside the cavity of the oven, if you will, you’ll see there’s quite a bit of buildup in there, and some of it’s loose and some of it is hardened on, which is why I’m using this scraper to do some cursory cleaning. I want to get off as much as I can so that I don’t actually have to scrub and clean that mess up. So, I’m just using a paper towel to do that. Wiping it all out. Now, I’m making up a solution. Four parts baking soda, one part dish soap, one part water. I’ll stir it up. And you want to have a nice thick paste. So, you can fiddle around with the consistency. If you want it a little bit thinner, go for it. I’m just applying it by hand here. I’m sure there’s a more eloquent way to do it, but I just felt like going crazy crazy town. So, here I am. I’m putting it on the sides, even on the door, but I have a feeling I’m going to do the door with Barkeeper’s Friend. Now, I’m removing that drawer and just using a handheld vacuum to get under because seriously, who is pulling out their oven? And I found a giant spiderweb, so it was a good thing I did it. Now, I’m using a paper towel to wipe out any of the debris. And then, I’m giving it a good spray because obviously I can’t put this in the sink. I’m using a soap filled sponge just to give it a good scrub down. Then I’m going to use a wet microfiber cloth to rinse the interior of this drawer and I can put it off to the side. Little pro tip here is to put a towel down so that your knees don’t get sore. Now in that bowl I’ve just got some water. I’ve waited 30 minutes, by the way, to do this. That product has sat for 30 minutes and I’m just starting to scrub. Now, you guys will notice I’m using my left hand only. My right shoulder, for those of you who don’t know, I dislocated it a while ago, so I actually can’t clean with that arm, and it is my dominant arm. So, my cleaning chops are a little bit suffering right now, but bear with me. So, I’m doing a mix of the scraper and the heavy duty scrub pad. Making sure to get the sides, the back, and of course, the bottom as well. I’m gonna give this window a good cleaning, but again, I’m just going to use Barkeeper’s Friend because it needs that extra oomph. It took me between five and 10 minutes to scrub inside that oven. And again, I was using my non-dominant hands, so I didn’t get the best results. But that’s essentially the technique that you’re going to use. And now I’m just using water and microfiber cloths to quote unquote rinse the inside of the oven because baking soda leaves a residue behind. I’m going to finish it up with a vinegar rinse here. So, I’m just taking another microfiber cloth and giving everything a final wipe down with some vinegar. That just helps to cut any residual grease and polish things up in there. Now, I’m splashing water onto the interior oven window and I’m sprinkling Barkeeper’s Friend on there. It’s a super powerful product, but you can only use it on the glass in here. I’m using that heavy duty scrub pad to get all of that buildup off. It really does take a little bit of effort. actually a lot of elbow grease, but it does come off. And this ended up coming out beautifully clean. So, here I’m using a microfiber cloth dipped in water to quote unquote rinse it off. You may want to do it once or twice. And you can see that glass is clean. I mean, the interior panels are another story, but the glass itself is very clean. So, now you know how to get that nonself cleaning oven clean and ready for your next recipe. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, are you someone who does regular oven maintenance, or are you someone who waits until it’s smoking and stinking and looks terrifying and that’s when you get ready to clean it? Let me know your preference in the comments down below. Honestly, this is a self-cleing oven and I wait, I’m bad. I know I should do better. I should do better. Yet, here I am. But I want to know what you do in the comments down below. If you like what we do here at Clean MySpace, you can subscribe to our newsletter. It’s called The Dirty Dish. And we share our favorite cleaning products and tools and techniques in that email. Comes right to your inbox. You can subscribe with the link down below. And since we’re sitting right here at the oven, I’m going to share a video with you called Two Easy Ways to Clean Your Oven Racks right over here. Since that’s a job you’re going to have to do as well, just a quick reminder if you haven’t done so already to subscribe to the Clean My Space channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.