“The time has come,” the grease spots said.
“To clean up many things:
Like ovens — and racks —  and window panes —
Like elements — and rings.”

One day last week Dan and I decided the best way to spend a mutual day off would be to clean the oven. Even though our housemate Simon had declared in February that he would clean the oven, he came back from Easter break having contracted glandular fever, or more commonly known to North Americans as Mono(nucelosis) – gross. Needless to say, he wasn’t about to get down and dirty with our range any time soon, and after a few attempted usages in previous days, we had rendered the oven too dangerous to continue using with being cleaned.  So, Dan and I busted out the rubber gloves and got right down to it.

As I am more detail oriented I was in charge of cleaning the racks, and Dan, more satisfied by large scale success, set about to clean the oven itself. Now, before I go on, I feel I must inform you of the primary use of our oven, in an attempt to illustrate just what was clinging to the enamel of that black hole. Bacon. That’s right, 9 times out of 10, that oven is cooking bacon or some other half meat, half grease kickshaw. What does this mean for our poor little range? Well, basically it means every inch of that little black box was covered in a thick melange of solidified meat juices. Yum. We were at a point where smoke would pour out the door after a simple preheating session; hence our decision to deploy the cleaning troops. Simon will just have to get the next one.

Here are some pictures from our cleaning experience:

Of course we couldn’t be expected to just clean the oven, we had to make it interesting. We decided to pit two cleaners against each other on the most rewarding part of the oven, the window. We would use the Poundland cleaner that Dan bought (for 1£), Big D, and compare it to the expensive brand name cleaner than Sam bought when he cleaned the oven several months ago (around 5£), Mr Muscle. The two products have very different instructions and disclaimers as well. Mr Muscles warns you that seeking medical help is advised if your skin comes in contact with the product. Big D wasn’t as scary and just suggested washing it off, in that instance. Possibly an early indication of it’s effectiveness; nevertheless, we soldiered on.

Here are the exciting pictures that accompany this story:

Mr Muscle on the left and Big D on the right.

Unfortunately, for the sake of this experiment we weren’t very scientific. The Big D cleaner only required 4 to 6 minutes of soaking time, while Mr Muscle called for 30. We wanted to have the reveal at the same time so we let the Big D sit for 30 minutes, too, what could it hurt? we thought. It seemed to all but disappear in that time, so our results weren’t that conclusive.

The results are in, and…neither of them did that great a job. If we had to choose a winner on the window experiment, we’d probably choose Mr Muscle, but we had to scrub really, really hard with both and even still we were left with some caked on grease that would not budge. But, in the end, of course, the oven looked miles better than it did when we started. And we are happy to report there have been no preheating fire scares since the undertaking.