Tip: Pet-Safe Way To Clean An Oven

It’s not safe to let grease, grime, and spilled food build up on the walls of your oven, but many oven cleaners are also not safe to use with pets in the home. If you care about your gerbils as much as we do, this is a real concern!

Earlier this year, we had to clean our oven, and I didn’t want to take chances with the self-cleaning feature. (I know using the self-cleaning setting can be harmful if you have pet birds. I wasn’t sure about rodents but decided not to take a chance.) Clearly, harsh chemicals that produce fumes weren’t an option either since we didn’t have somewhere to relocate the gerbils while the fumes were in the house.

I found a great tip for using baking soda to clean an oven. This worked like a charm, and I didn’t have to worry about oven-cleaner fumes harming the gerbils either!

To summarize the information in the article above:

1. Make sure your oven is cool.


2. Mix baking soda and water together in a spray bottle.


3. Remove the racks from the oven and spray down the walls and floor of the oven with the baking soda and water mixture.


4. Repeat the step whenever the last layer you sprayed has dried. Continue this process for several hours.


5. After letting it sit for many hours, get a pail of hot water and a sponge and wipe down the inside of the oven.


6. Continue rinsing the inside of the oven until it is clean.

Again, that’s only a brief summary. I’d still suggest reading the in-depth oven-cleaning instructions at eHow.