Friday, May 4, 2012

Green Cleaning Series : Microwave

I realize that sounded a bit oxymoron.
If your really natural, you don't use your microwave, do you?
We aren't there yet. Though we are getting better.
But if your like me you may need to warm up or defrost something because you
wasn't dutifully prepared. It's okay, it happens to the best of us.
In this case in our home, it was defrosting some frozen black beans
I had frozen in a glass jar. I told my oldest daughter just heat them 
up enough to slide them out of the jar. Some how that got lost
in the translation. What she heard was, Heat that mutha UP!

And this was the end result.....


And to make matter worse, she did not know it had exploded. 
So, she kept right on nuking the contents that had splattered all over the microwave. 
It was nice and baked on by the time we noticed. But did I get upset?
No.
Well, maybe I had strong words about listening to all directions with her.
But I wasn't worried about the mess. 
After dinner that night I poured some of my citrus vinegar into a bowl 
and then mixed it with some filtered water.
I placed it in the microwave uncovered and heated it on high for 3 minutes.
When it was done, I set the timer for 5 minutes. During this time I 
was hand washing the nightly dishes and cleaning up in general. 
When the 5 minutes was up I could tell the glass "plate" was going to need
to be soaked. I simply slipped it into my dish water I had in my sink.
Then I took a dish cloth and without much elbow grease wiped the  microwave clean.
Yes, it was that effortless.
The water and vinegar had made steam in the microwave, therefore loosening all 
the baked on, caked on, splattered gunk. To the point all I had to was simply
wipe it away. It took me less than 3 minutes to wipe it out. Once I was 
done I turned my attention to the turntable. It had soaked in warm/hot dish water
for nearly 3 minutes. It also wiped clean with very little effort at all. 
Don't dismiss the power of steam! 5 minutes after I started to wipe 
the microwave down it looked like this...


Not too shabby and done without using any harmful chemicals or much effort on my part!


2 comments:

Rebecca said...

We still use our microwave, too. I think when it dies I will probably not buy a new one and just be forced to go without. With busy teenagers in my house it is convenient to have though. I love citrus vinegar! I have some brewing all the time so I never go without.

Chele said...

Yes, it was a busy teenager who inflicted this mess so I can understand that! We rent and ours is installed over the stove. I tried unplugging it for awhile, it helped but eventually we went right back to it. When we purchase a home next year, I do believe ours won't have one. I don't know how long we will make it without one, LOL But we are going to try!