All You Need Is A Dishwasher Pod To Effortlessly Clean Your Oven

For all the work your oven does day in and day out, it often gets neglected. Between batches of biscuits and rounds of sheet pan dinners, you should be doing some regular maintenance to keep your oven clean. Many people might not know it, but you should clean your oven every three months. Every time you bake or roast, grease and other invisible particles become airborne and attach themselves to the surfaces inside the oven, and over time they build up. If you let it go on long enough, the grease can become a fire hazard. Cleaning the oven isn't anyone's favorite chore, and it's easy to forget that it's getting dirty even when you're not using it. Plus, most people think you have to go out and buy a special cleaning spray to get the job done. Cleaning the oven doesn't take long when you have the right cleaner for the job, though — and all you need is a dishwasher detergent tablet.

With just a pair of rubber gloves, some hot water, and a dishwashing tab, you can make quick work of the gunk hanging around in your oven without inhaling any unhealthy fumes from store-bought spray cleaners. You'll also gain a little peace of mind knowing that your oven is safe for cooking.

To quickly rid your oven of all the debris inside, you will need something stronger than just soap and water. This is why people often reach for oven cleaning products like Easy Off, which contains powerful chemicals that soften and loosen all the gunk stuck to the oven's walls. However, these sprays are also toxic to inhale, so unless your kitchen is well-ventilated, it's not a good idea to stick your head into a small space with a cloud of fumes. Instead, grab a dishwasher tablet, a bowl of water, and a pair of dishwashing gloves.

The chemicals in the detergent that cleans your dishes also work great on oven surfaces; all you need to do is wet the tablet and use it like a sponge to scrub the surfaces of your oven. When the tablet starts to dry out, dip it in the water again. The best dishwasher tablets to use are the ones that are made out of pressed powder, like classic Finish Deep Clean tablets. Pods made with gel will not give you an abrasive texture, which you need to scrape away baked-on gunk from the oven walls.

Once you have all the junk scrubbed off, you can rinse the inside of your oven with hot water and some dish towels. And just like that, you've got a clean oven.

While dishwasher tabs are safer than oven cleaner spray, they're not without hazards. It's essential that you wear rubber gloves for this job and not use your bare hands because they are highly alkaline so they can dissolve a lot of things like baked-on grease, dried food particles — and human skin. If your bare hands come in contact with the detergent tabs, wash them off immediately; otherwise, they'll start to burn. Also, be sure to protect your eyes and try not to accidentally rub your face with a gloved hand.

Once you've finished cleaning your oven, if you have a bit of the dishwasher tab left over, you can toss it into the dishwasher next time you run a load of dishes so it doesn't go to waste. Also, it's easy to forget that you'll need to do this all over again in three months, so set a reminder on your phone or digital calendar to clean the oven in 12 weeks. Even though it's not a fun chore, if you clean your oven (and the rest of your kitchen) regularly, it'll go a lot faster each time because there'll be less to scrub if you keep up with the battle of the grunge. Now that you know you don't have to take a special trip to the store for cleaning spray, you have no excuse to "forget" about cleaning the oven again.