Cleaning the Kitchen

Growing up as a kid, my mom would always reserve an entire week in the summer when we would all Spring clean as a family. While it was a pain back then, it instilled valuable knowledge and habits that I appreciate as an adult.

Unfortunately, with Dear Husband (DH) and I working full time, my attempts at Spring cleaning have failed miserably due to a lack of concentrated time. So this year I am trying something different.

In January, I started a house cleaning/purging challenge by following along with A Bowl Full of Lemons blog. It is a 14 week challenge, where you tackle a different area of the house each week.

Well, that has been going well... and poorly. I started off on-schedule cleaning the kitchen week one, but also into week two.... and then weeks three and four. Oops.
Yeah, the kitchen took way longer than expected, much to Dear Husband's (DH) chagrin.

I started off cleaning the fridge (it was the day before grocery shopping so excuse how empty it is.)

Then I cleaned the dishwasher, microwave, and oven. I hadn't cleaned the oven in the 3 years we have been living here and while it wasn't terrible, it certainly wasn't fun.

First I tried the overnight ammonia trick, but that didn't really help all that much. In the end it all came down to good ole' baking soda, water, and elbow grease.
Before:
After:











In addition to cleaning, I also did some clearing. Can you believe I got rid of all of these plastic storage containers to the left?!

In the end, these few to the right is all I kept.


Yes, I was able to get all that done in a week, but what took so much longer was cleaning and refinishing the cabinets.
Being over 25 years old, the cabinets were dull and a bit faded.

It is really tough to photograph, but see how the cabinet on the right side is a bit dull? In comparison, the cabinet on the left is one I had treated.

So what did I do?
First I cleaned. I am convinced that the only thing to clean wood with is Murphy's Oil Soap. Not only does it clean really well, it doesn't dry or fade the wood. (And the scent reminds me when I was little and would crawl inside the cabinets to clean them.)
The only bad thing is that you still have to rinse after washing.

The next step is to use Howard "Restor-A-Finish." Let me tell you... this stuff is magic! See how the treated cabinet has more pronounced wood grain? It looks so much better after this stuff. So what's the big deal? It is basically a solvent and a stain in one. So it penetrates through the finish of the wood, to re-stain underneath. This means you don't have to strip the finish! Ok, so it wouldn't work on lacquer, but on most natural wood finishes it would work.

Then to give it a protective, natural glow I finished it off with Howard "Feed-N-Wax." It's a combination of oil and wax, very easy to apply. It even smelled really good.

Since I had the doors off to clean and finish them anyway, I went ahead and replaced the outdated 90's hardware and hinges with more modern brushed nickle handles. I think this made the biggest difference and gives a bit of pop to the cabinets.

As long as I was at it... I also wanted to deal with our trash can that sits just outside of the kitchen, in the dining room. Who wants to look at a trash can when they are having a nice meal in the dining room? I wanted it concealed, and through my purging, I was able to clear enough room to install a pull-out trash can in one of the cabinets.

Normally the doors swing open, so I bought some Rev-a-Shelf hardware (which was super easy to install) and a special bracket to mount the door on the front.
It's silly how giddy this makes me. Sometimes it's the small things in life.


So between washing, rinsing, staining, wiping, waxing, then buffing, I had to go over every square inch of exposed wood 6 times! No wonder it took me four weeks. This was the only time I have ever hated having so many cabinets in the kitchen: 40 doors/drawers total!

The pictures don't really do it justice, but I think it looks so much better. I forgot to take a "before" picture so this one was already partway through the process.
Before:

























After:


The only thing left is to get rid of the 90's border and tomato red. But that is for another day.