5 tips to keep your oven clean

1. The interior

The walls and floor of your oven often get the harshest treatment. Anything that spills will inevitably end up caked on to them and potentially burnt to an extremely difficult-to-clean crisp. Even if you're careful not to spill a drop, oils in your baked goods evaporate and end up coating the interior. To get your walls and floor back to their original shine, Home-Dzine recommends that you cover everything in a layer of baking soda before spraying the oven down with enough water to make the powder damp. Let this mixture sit for a few hours and then scrub everything down with a sponge and some soap. Good as new!

2. The racks
Next, you have to worry about the racks. Your oven racks probably aren't as dirty as the oven itself, but they can get a serious accumulation of baking grease over time. Set them in a mixture of warm water and dish soap and let them sit overnight. The soap will slowly break apart the chemical bonds in the grease, making it easy to scrub off once it's been sitting for a while.

3. The glass
The glass is a bit trickier to clean. Most ovens come with three layers of glass in order to insulate the inside. This is helpful, because without proper insulation, your oven would have to work much harder to maintain its internal temperature. After a while, vaporized cooking oils can seep through cracks between the layers and deposit on each glass face, giving a dirty brown look. Cleaning the glass won't do much to improve the workings of your oven, but it will go a long way toward making your oven look like new.

In order to clean the glass, you'll have to disassemble your oven door. Before you start, find or look online for your oven user manual – every oven is different and you don't want to make a mistake that you have to pay someone else to fix. Once you get the glass out of the door, it's a simple matter of using some window spray to wipe down each face. Some degreasing spray might not be a bad idea either.

4. Spare parts
If your oven is particularly old, it has probably lost a couple of little pieces here and there along the way. This is no reason to toss out your whole oven – most of the time, you can find the piece you're looking for online for bargain prices. Just type your oven's model number into Google, plus the name of the part you need, and chances are you'll find it!

5. Be cautious when using "self-clean"
A lot of ovens these days come with self-cleaning features, but we do not recommend that you use them. The reason for this, as Adam Dahl of The Appliance Loft, an appliance shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, explained to The Kitchn, is that while consumers often want this feature, it's very difficult to safely accomplish for manufacturers. Temperatures get well above cooking norms – up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit – which can burn out fuses and electrical parts of the oven. According to Dahl, a large portion of calls for repair work on ovens come after an owner uses the self-clean function.

Ovens represent a considerable investment, so it's important to keep yours clean and in working order to avoid the high cost of repair or replacement. Consider purchasing a TotalProtect® Home Warranty if you haven't already. It helps cover the cost when appliances break down after the manufacturer warranty expires, shielding you from unexpected expenses.

The information in this article is intended to provide guidance on the proper maintenance and care of systems and appliances in the home. Not all of the topics mentioned are covered by our home warranty or maintenance plans. Please review your home warranty contract carefully to understand your coverage.