Stainless Steel Stained? Get that Baby Oil out! (Hints and Tips for Household Cleaning)

Member Name: Redhead23

Product:	Hints and Tips for Household Cleaning
Date:	20/01/02 (23527 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Shiny appliances, need only a tiny bit

Disadvantages: Better uses for baby oil? ;-)

First off, in spite of all the dirty ideas that the thought of a childless couple + baby oil + kitchen might bring into your filthy minds - no, I didn't actually discover this nifty trick myself 'by accident', nor did hubby have anything to do with it (he rarely does when it comes to cleaning, but he's fairly good at making a mess!) ;-)

Right, so with your mind free of filth, I can now let you in on one of the easiest yet most effective secrets to cleaning stainless steel appliances! I say 'secret' because, despite making perfect sense, most manufacturers of such appliances seem to get a kick out of withholding this little trick from their customers. Most, but thankfully not NewWorld :)


So here's how I discovered the joys of stainless steel appliances - and (to my surprise!) the joy of cleaning them, too!

In early December 2001, we suddenly started smelling gas in our kitchen. Not much, and only to one corner of the hob, but still gas. So we got the nice Transco chap to cut off our gas and spent the next two days in a freezing cold house (good excuse to spend your evenings at the pub I suppose!), waiting for a plumber to put us out of our misery.

The day (and with it the plumber) finally arrived, and instead of telling us that it was just a pipe that could be replaced, he kindly let us know that chances were quite high that our hob was leaking, and thus needed replacing. Great, just before Christmas and all...

In addition he also told us that our sink seemed to empty itself out under the kitchen floor (lovely - so that smell didn't come from the boiler after all!!!), but this didn't really surprise me since the previous owners had anything but looked after the house. This also meant that the built-in oven and cooker that came with the house were in as filthy a state as possible when we moved in, and in spite of repeated scrubbing, soaking in bleach und using 2 cans of oven cleaner
on it, I had never really managed to get it back to a decent state of cleanliness.

As luck would have it, just the day before the plumber got here a PowerHouse brochure had fluttered into our house, with an unbeatable offer: A NewWorld built-in fan oven and gas hob in stainless steel for £299! Already having had a good drool over the brochure (I do love silvery things after all, in particular satin stainless steel!) the day before, my mind was made up and I got hubby to phone around our local PowerHouse branches to track down one that stocked the items on offer. Harder than you'd think, since the brochure didn't mention that the offer wasn't on until the next week! Still, we managed to find one that already had 2 of them in stock, albeit about an hour's drive from Huddersfield.

Off we went the next day, and the people in the shop were so stunned at our long trek that they even gave us a free extended warranty with the microwave we had bought with it - bargain!
Waiting for the plumber to come back and install the beauty, I started thinking about what others had told me about how hard it was to keep stainless steel clean. Hm, maybe I should have thought about that before splashing out on it!

After a bit of waiting (thank god I bought that microwave then! It isn't easy to get plumbers and electricians in just before Christmas!), the oven and hob were finally installed, and they looked absolutely great, even in that modest B&Q kitchen the previous owners had shoved in (I say shoved because there is no way that thing was professionally installed!).

But the first one of hubby's generous (in oil that is, being a veggie his meat feasts aren't my cuppa tea) fry-ups only seemed to confirm my worries - the tiniest of drops and stains, even fingerprints, show on stainless steel! Already feeling like kicking myself up the backside for giving myself more work with my new purchase, I grabbed the manufacturer's
manual and went straight for the 'Cleaning your Appliance' section - and to my surprise, there it was!


- Stop waffling, what's the secret? -

First off - and this counts for ALL types of hobs, not just stainless steel ones! - get yourself a splash guard for your frying pan! In case you don't know what that is, these things look a bit like flat metal sieves a little larger than your bog standard frying pan. You put them on top of your pan and the fine metal mesh catches any escaping drops of oil while still letting air circulate in the pan.
They cost around £3 (ours is from Morrisons) and will greatly reduce the amount of stains on your hob, so there's less reason to clean it in the first place!


Right, so as the title and the introduction already gave away - the 'secret' is BABY OIL!
I had to giggle for a bit when the manual actually told me to buy a bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil, but since they seemed quite serious about it I went out and bought some at the earliest opportunity.
Not sure whether it HAS to be Johnson's, but just to play it safe I got the branded version anyway.

The thing is that most stains on your hob will be oil (or rather after wiping off spilt sauces etc. there will still be greasy stains left on it), and on other appliances you will frequently have fingerprints (which are usually pretty greasy too!) from, well, using the bloody things with mucky mitts!

So what better to get rid of oil than with a different kind of oil? Once other stains (sauces, salt water etc.) have been wiped off roughly, just grab a bit of kitchen roll, put a drop or two of baby oil on it and rub it over the stained area - this will remove most of the 'obvious' greasy bits.
Then take a clean sheet of kitchen roll, put another drop on and rub down the whole appliance (well, the steel bits anyway) evenly so that no smudges are left on it - done!

The great
thing is that, since baby oil has the ability to 'integrate' other oils, wiping the whole appliance down with it will remove any smudges, fingerprints and whatnot and will (unless you have gone totally OTT on the baby oil) leave the surface sparkling clean and shiny, just as new!

One word of warning though - salt can corrode stainless steel surfaces, and some oils used in cooking can contain added salts, so don't even think about using those instead of baby oil! The reason why it's BABY oil is that it's mild and doesn't contain an awful amount of additives, so stick with Johnson's!


Once the hob has cooled down, I usually wipe off any larger stains (try to avoid those in the first place though, although that isn't really possible when hubby's got a hold of the frying pan!) and then give it a quick rub with baby oil. Once a week I rub it down thoroughly (Ooh-Err!) and after nearly 2 months it's still as stainless and shiny as we bought it!

So if you're struggling to keep your stainless steel appliances clean and shiny, get yer hands on a bottle of baby oil! And who knows, maybe the man of the house will soon show a bit more interest in cleaning the kitchen *ahem* with you ;-)

(c) 2002 Redhead23

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