How To Safely Clean Behind Your Kitchen Stove

[♥ Lily ♥]

By Miss Mustard Seed

Every time I move something from where it’s been sitting for a long time, I realize just how gross my family (myself included) is! You know what I’m saying? All of those spills and crumbs and dust-bunnies that haven’t seen the light of day and then they are exposed? Even the cleanest, tidiest house has a few dirty secrets. And one of the best hiding places for splatters, crumbs, and grease is behind the stove. I mean, seriously, how often do we pull out the stove to clean behind it? I don’t know about you, but in the 11 years I lived in my last house, I pulled out the stove three times – once for tiling the floor, once for painting the walls, and once for tiling the back splash. Each time we moved it, I took a few minutes to clean the sides of the stove and all sides of the recess.

In the kitchen in our new house, we were having a gas line installed, so they had to pull out the range to do that.



And it was no surprise that there were some splatters and spills that needed to be cleaned.

Now, no judging! This house was otherwise clean, so my guess is there hasn’t been an excuse to pull this stove out for a while!



There is our pretty, new gas line!



So, while the stove was pulled out, I took the time to clean back there. I used SOS scour pads. They are steel wool pads impregnated with grease-cutting soap, so you just wet one and start scrubbing.



Here it is mid-scrub…



I used the scour pads on the cabinet, the floors, and the walls. Then, I wiped off the soap with a wet paper towel and lastly, sprayed them with Mrs. Meyers Lavender cleaner and wiped them down one last time. That final step was to make it smell nice. It was smelling a little like old grease back there.



And ta-da! Soooooo much better!



I was nervous about getting too close to 220 volt power with a wet scour pad, so it’s still a little dirty around the outlet, but we’re having a new dual-fuel stove installed in a couple of weeks and I’ll take a few minutes to finish cleaning when that happens.

Until then, I thought this would be a good cleaning tip to share. Curious what it looks like behind your stove now, hm?

It’s probably a good idea to do this once or twice a year, but you at least want to do this before you have repair/renovation work done that involves pulling out your stove!

https://missmustardseed.com/cleaning-behind-stove/

[♥ Lily ♥]

[Wegner]

This reminds me of the time one of my mom's friends pulled out her stove to clean behind it..and I happened to be there to notice that the electrical cable from the circuit breaker panel was connected directly to the stove. That is, there was no "range outlet" or "range cord", just a cable coming out of the wall connected directly to the stove (and there was barely enough slack on the cable to get the stove out very far!)

That was a fire waiting to happen, because the terminals on a stove are NOT designed for raw wire to be connected to them, and won't make a good connection. What they are designed for is the ring terminals crimped onto a "range cord".

So after a trip to Home Depot to get a "range outlet" and a "range cord", I installed the outlet and cord for her. I was probably 16-17 years old at the time.

She told me her husband had installed the stove. Apparently there had never been an outlet installed for the stove in that house. Even in the 1960s when it was built, a stove outlet should have been installed. All I can guess is that MAYBE whomever installed the last stove used mechanical lugs to connect the cable to the stove's terminal block or they have just been really lucky. Probably the latter--I can't see someone being knowledgeable enough to know about mechanical lugs and using them instead of a cord and outlet.

But this sort of hack/crap work is really common in the part of the USA where I live. GIT-R-DONE, even if it's GIT-R-DONE-WRONG.