Spring Cleaning Guide: Kitchen Edition

The kitchen is often the hub of a home; the magic of family gatherings happens there.

If it’s time for you to start spring cleaning then you don’t want to go halfway. You want to make sure you completely cover everything. Let’s begin!

Clear out anything that doesn’t belong in the kitchen. Then wash, dry, and put away all of your dishes. Make sure the countertops are clear. No need to deal with clutter; today is all about deep cleaning.

Let’s tackle your food situation first. This will help keep your space decluttered and feeling fresh.

The first step here is to take out ALL of your food out of the pantry and put it on the table. Now check through all of it and trash anything that is expired, stale, inedible, or empty.

Now that all of that is gone it’s time to put everything you want to donate into a bag or a cardboard box and put it by the front door.

Take a rag and dust your pantry shelves, then go in with soapy water or a cleaning solution and make sure they are completely cleaned. Once dry you can go ahead and put food back in on the shelves (though you may want to take some kind of inventory first).

The fun part is arranging everything in the pantry again! It feels very satisfying to look at a nice, clean, organized pantry.

Just like with the pantry you are now going to put all of your food from the fridge onto the table (or counters, if you need).

Same as before, toss everything that is expired, inedible, moldy, empty, etc.

Now you have a few options. You can go in with soapy water and kitchen cleaner on all of the shelves OR you can take them all out and wash them one by one. You can take them outside and power wash them with a hose or just do it in the sink.

We recommend taking the shelves out so that you can also clean the walls of your fridge unobstructed.

You can go ahead and place the food items back in the fridge, arranging them in a careful and organized manner.

If you have excess magnets and papers on the outside of your fridge go ahead and sift these. Get rid of things you don’t need or use, then clean and polish the outside of your fridge.

Check out our guide to fridge organization here!

Freezers can be intimidating to clean! But some of the steps are the same as the fridge and pantry — take out all of the food, take stock of it, and get rid of what is old and unusable.

Common indications of spoiled freezer food include: abnormal discoloration, not-so-good smells, a layer of frost on the food that is inside the container.

If you want to deep clean your freezer then it will require unplugging the whole unit, waiting for the freezer to defrost, then draining it out scrubbing the walls with a cleaning solution.

However, this might be too much for a yearly spring cleaning. Aim to do this once every three years, rather than every single year.

If your freezer has any lingering smells then you can put a box of baking soda or a small bowl of activated charcoal in the freezer while it is running for a few hours. If bad smells persist then keep a small open box of baking soda in your freezer at all times and replace it every three months.

Time to get some rags and disinfectant. We suggest taking all of your appliances and putting them out on the table and using that opportunity to clean your counters and backsplash as fully as possible.

Make sure you get all of these:

There are just a few more things to address before you are done.

We recommend emptying your dishwasher and then putting a cup of white vinegar in the upper rack and then running it. This is a great way to make sure you don’t have any grease or odors.

Your oven may have a self-cleaning setting, which is great. This is a method established in 1963 that uses extreme heat (and by extreme we mean up to nearly 1000 degrees) for a few hours to burn away anything left in the over. It is important not to touch it: don’t even touch the exterior while this process is going on. You need to make sure to follow ALL manufacturer instructions in this case. Unfortunately, you will still have to clean it prior to and after doing a self-cleaning.

If using the self-cleaning method makes you nervous you can also open the oven and do a deep scrub instead. You can find a chemical oven cleaner or use a non-toxic homemade cleaner, but this method will require some serious elbow grease and at least an hour for a well-used stove.

Now that your oven is done, the last step is the floors! This one will feel easy to complete and makes for a satisfying end to your kitchen cleaning day.

Just sweep thoroughly first and then mop or sponge the floor with a combination of warm water and floor cleaning fluid (dish detergent can help for the sticky spots).

Make sure to research what the best floor cleaner is for the kind of floor material you have!

Don’t forget the tricky spots like the space under your fridge!

It’s over! Your kitchen is practically brand new! Doesn’t it feel so nice to look around you at gleaming surfaces and know that every inch of your kitchen is clean?

Now it’s time to make sure you maintain good habits when it comes to kitchen cleanliness — wipe down your oven, clean your surfaces often, sweep weekly, stay organized. This will make your spring cleaning easier next year!

Are you in need of some help cleaning our your house this spring? We here at Maid Bright bring the best maid service the Washington DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia.