Spring cleaning

I'm not very consistent in my cleaning activities. If you came to our house you would see a nice layer of dust (or whatever damn organisms they really are) living on one of the three dressers in our bedroom. I fully embraced the philosophy that spending time with your child is more important than cleaning long before Little Miss C was even born.

But when the snow begins to melt, I get a fever. Yesterday, I took a half day off work to stay home with Little Miss C and while she was napping (a rarity these days, I might add) I took on the stove's exhaust hood.

Which had not been cleaned since we move in. Seriously. Nearly 5 years people. Yuck.

I had to go to Target (who needs a reason?) and pick up rubber gloves. Yuckity-yuck.

I have been researching using vinegar as a cleaning solution to replace the chemicals in the current products so thought I would test it out on the range.

Hmmm, me thinks that the recipes I saw online failed to take into consideration nearly 5 years of build up. Let's just say that even with a fully soaked (for multiple hours) sponge of white vinegar I had to pull out the SOS pad to even get through the first layer of crap.

(Anyone interested in coming over for dinner?)

I also attempted this recipe for the microwave. Not as much of a success as they tout on the site. However, the fully-loaded-vinegar-sponge did the trick.

I'm going to try to be more diligent on cleaning the range hood and hope to find more success with vinegar. If anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to share. I am thinking I will test out the paste version with baking soda on something this weekend.

And then summer will come and I won't clean again for several months because I will have moved onto the garden.