How to Clean a Filthy Microwave

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Do you or your roommates reheat spaghetti, soup, or other saucy and oily foods without using a cover? Do you make microwave popcorn?  If so, your microwave is dirty and it smells gross. Here's a tip that will make it supereasy to get even the dirtiest microwave clean.

This old microwave stays clean because we always use a splatter shield.

Put a halved lemon in a microwave-safe bowl with about 1/4 cup of water and nuke it, uncovered, for two minutes or longer.

Don't have a lemon? Ok. Fill a microwave-safe cup with about 1/4 cup of either white vinegar or bottled lemon juice and 1/4 cup water and nuke that instead.

The acidy-delicious steam that results from this will cut funk and make it easier to scrub off baked-on oily foods. Spray all-purpose cleaner onto the walls of the microwave and wipe them clean with a sponge, preferably one with a loofah or gentle nylon scrubby side in case you need a little more abrasiveness.

If somehow you still have to fight pretty hard to remove funk and stuck on food, nuke the lemon again, but for a little while longer. Squeezing a little of the lemon juice into the water can help too.

I have cleaned some of the grossest microwaves in NYC and this technique always works!

Of course, when I see a dirty microwave I always want to tell people to just use a splatter shield. Who wants to deal with this nastiness between visits? That's no way to live! I got my splatter shield at the dollar store ten million years ago, but you can find them at most home goods stores. I store the splatter shield in the microwave so that it's easier to use it than to not use it.

If you don't want to buy a hunk of plastic- and I don't blame you- you can always just place a saucer over a bowl or a bowl over a plate.

Thanks for reading this blog entry. I hope it was helpful. Please like Olivia Cleans Green on Facebook, join my email list, and subscribe to my blog posts (by RSS or email) to keep in touch and discover more creative cleaning and green homekeeping tips.