Easy How-To Clean Your Microwave

With the holidays approaching and extra guests in and out of the house, I thought I would do a little special cleaning of some of the more neglected areas of our house. . . . starting with the microwave.

The microwave is used primarily by the Ferrell boys in heating up their snacks and Kids Cuisine meals.  They seem to eat all the time.  No joke!

One evening while Dave and I were laying in the bed watching a movie . . . a rare treat for us . . . we were startled by a very excited Alex.  It seems that he discovered that Zach almost set the microwave on fire!

Was it tin foil? Something metal?  No . . . not any of the usual microwave fire starting culprits of the microwave.

It was Velveeta mac & cheese.  How?  Apparently Zach was in such a hurry to make this favorite snack that he forgot to put the water in the bowl when he put it in the microwave.  The end result was a burnt black hard mound of elbow macaroni.  It truly looked like a piece of lava rock.  And it truly stunk up our house . . . for days!  I thought we would never get rid of that smell.

It was as I was rescuing the lava rock a/k/a macaroni rock that I noticed the inside of the microwave.  Not only did it stink of burnt food, but it was truly disgusting inside.

So I did a little research on the web and found several different methods for cleaning the microwave.  After reading some of them, this is what I did.  

I mixed 1 cup of water with 2 Tbsp of vinegar and heated it in the microwave for 5 minutes.  After waiting a couple of minutes, I removed the mixture and wiped down the inside of the microwave. All the gross stuff wiped off easily.

But it was really gross stuff. . . really gross, greasy stuff . . . so I sprayed some clorox cleanup inside and wiped it down again.   At this point it was squeaky clean.

Before:  

After:

Clean and shiny . . . but it still smelled terrible.  Heating up the vinegar mixture revived the terrible burnt smell from the macaroni lava rock.  What to do?

I saw on Pinterest where you could heat up 1/2 cup of water with 1 tsp of vanilla extract in the microwave up to the boiling point (I did it for 1 minute) and then leave it in the microwave with the door closed all night.

So I did that and . . . it sure does smell good in my house right now.  :)

Easy Cleaning of the Microwave.   √ Check

Now if I can just keep it clean!  It's not always easy keeping a clean house when living with


                                   the Ferrell boys and me!

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