The Easiest Way to Clean Dirty Oven Shelves

There are some fun hacks for cleaning oven shelves. For example, quite a few people swear when left overnight in the dewy grass. But what else to do if you don’t want to clumsily stick your body in the oven to clean shelves that are too big to fit in a sink or dishwasher? You need to think bigger – you need to expand your understanding of what a “dishwasher” is.

A dishwasher can be anything that cleans kitchen utensils. What do you have at home for washing big things? That’s right: bath.

How to clean the oven shelves in the bath

As you’ll see in the TikTok below from Cleantok influencer Carolina McCauley , removing caked-on grime from your oven shelves is as easy as taking it out of the kitchen and into the bathroom.

First, take a dish detergent capsule. Plug the bathtub drain, drop in the capsule, and fill the bathtub with warm water, as if you were doing it with a bath bomb, if you climbed into it yourself. Then carefully place the racks into the tub for a spa treatment. Leave them for about three hours, let the detergent and water dissolve and wash off dried food and burnt dirt. This is where warm water really helps , so be sure to make it hot. (Bonus: Dishwashing liquid is a great bathtub cleaner, so it’s a bargain.)

Other things to keep in mind

A few extra tips: First, if you have non-slip bath mats, make sure they’re in place so you don’t scratch the inside of the tub. Secondly, if there is a large piece of crust on the wires, remove it by hand before placing the rack in the tub, just to avoid flushing it down the drain. (It’s recommended that you only do this in tubs with drain grates, just in case.) Finally, after you’ve drained the tub, use the shower head to give the shelf a final rinse to remove any detergent residue.

Let the rack dry there and then place it back in the oven. You didn’t even have to rub it.