You Take my Breath Away- and my Burned on Food, and my Dirty Floors

I don't usually have something to post twice in one day, but I suppose it's been an unusually productive day. And, since our camera is at youth conference today, I learned to download pictures from my phone. I thought I'd share. Lucky you! Hope you can see them.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled post.

Meet my stove.


He/She/It does a fantastic job of cooking our food and is used by almost every member of our family almost everyday. For some reason I never got around to lining the drip pans with tin foil when we moved in and they've been great at collecting lots of stuff that we spill every day. So, every week (ok, every month, but it's on the schedule for every week!) I let them soak overnight to get as much gunk off as possible. Despite my good intentions the front two drip pans looked like this after soaking all night and scrubbing this morning:



In case you can't tell by the wonderful photos above, they are covered in burned-on who-knows-what (eggs being a very good first guess). I scrub and scrub but am slowly being beaten out. This morning I remembered that ammonia is great at removing burned on messes in ovens. Maybe it would work for the drip pans, too.

To use ammonia in the oven, just fill a small bowl with ammonia. I use the small Corelle ones. (I don't know if it has to be glass or not, but it seems a little less reactive to me than metal. Plastic may work, too, but don't forget and leave it in the oven when you turn it on!) Set the bowl in the oven, close the door, go to bed. In the morning, get up, shower, etc, remove the bowl from the oven, wipe out all the burned-on spills, rinse sponge/rag, be done. Notice I said "wipe", not "scrub". It really is that easy.

I didn't want to use the whole oven this morning. (To be honest, we have a gas oven and I'm not sure if it's smart to fill the oven with ammonia fumes when there's gas and a pilot light near-by. I need to check in to that still.) I also didn't have all night before I needed to use the stove for dinner tonight. So, I created a small enclosed space with a large glass bowl and glass lid. I put the small bowl with ammonia at the bottom, the two drip pans on top (curved sides facing each other so the fumes could circulate) and then put the lid over the whole thing and left it for the day.


Right before I needed to cook dinner, I pulled them out. I did need to scrub because it had only been a few hours, but EVERY bit of burned on anything came off.



So, I'm thinking that for less than $2 a 64 oz. bottle of ammonia, I can have clean and shiny drip pans for a lot less money and work than covering them with tin foil. Woohoo! But wait, there's more! A little scrubbing with a little straight ammonia not only cleared my sinuses right out, it also cleaned off the stuff that burned to the stove top underneath the drip pan. (Don't ask me how that happened. It just did.)

And, I learned last week a cup of water, 1 tsp. of ammonia, and 2 Tbsp. of a gentle liquid soap of any kind makes a great jewelry cleaner. A little ammonia in a bucket of water does wonders on a kitchen floor. And, I'm assuming there's some sort of glass cleaning possibilities since Windex is all about having ammonia in it. I'll have to Google that.

The best part is, you don't have to order at all, much less in the next 10 minutes or even before next week, there are no special codes to enter, or coupons to find. This baby is available at your local grocer sitting humbly, probably on a bottom shelf, on the cleaning supplies aisle. If you're lucky, your grocer will also carry the lemon scented kind. Wal-Mart doesn't, but our grocery store (Hannaford's) in NH did. It doesn't clear our your sinuses as well, but it is a little more pleasant to be around.

So, remember this little guy the next time you're ready to throw your drip pans out the window and buy new ones.


It was the easiest cleaning job I've had in a long time.