Kitchen Deep Clean, Step by Step

The kitchen is where I see the most effort produce the least result, and it is rarely for lack of trying. The order is wrong, the chemistry is wrong for the mess in front of it, and the product gets wiped away 5 seconds after it lands. This is the sequence we work in, and it slots into the wider house cleaning schedule and checklist as the longest single room in the house.

Grease and scale are opposite problems

Fat responds to alkalinity. An alkaline degreaser loosens cooking residue so it lifts onto a cloth, which is why it works on cupboard fronts, rangehood housings and the film above the stove. Acid does close to nothing on baked-on fat. Mineral build-up runs the other way: the white crust on a tap, the cloudy haze on a glass splashback, the ring in the kettle and the scale in a stainless sink are alkaline deposits, and they come off with acid. We use citric acid for that. Scrubbing a tap with a degreaser gets nowhere for exactly that reason, and it is the same reason vinegar is oversold as a general cleaner despite being genuinely useful on scale.

Practical version: 2 products, 2 jobs. Alkaline for anything the cooking created, acid for anything the water left behind. Work out which one you are looking at before you spray, because using both on the same spot in the same minute neutralises them and wastes the effort.

Soak first, so time works while you do

The first physical act in a kitchen deep clean is filling something hot. Rangehood filter, oven racks, drip trays, the removable knobs and burner caps, the sink strainer. They go into the hottest water the sink or a laundry tub will give you with an alkaline degreaser, and they stay there for 30 to 60 minutes while you clean everything else. Metal that has soaked wipes. Metal that has not soaked has to be fought.

The same principle applies to dwell time on a vertical surface, and it is the step people skip most. Spraying and immediately wiping moves grease sideways rather than removing it. Give a degreaser 5 to 10 minutes on a cupboard front before you touch it, and re-wet it if it dries, because a dried product has stopped working.

The top of the cupboards

Airborne grease rises, drifts and lands, and the flat surfaces above eye level catch the most of it. Over a year or 2 that becomes a tacky amber film with dust set into it, and because nobody sees it, nobody addresses it. It is a standing entry on the list of spots most cleans miss.

Method: HEPA vacuum the loose dust off first so you are not turning it into paste. Then apply degreaser and leave it. Come back, work it with a stiff brush or a plastic scraper held flat, and lift the residue onto a cloth rather than smearing it around. Then repeat. On a badly built-up surface the first pass only softens the top layer, and the second pass is the one that clears it. Finish with a clean water wipe so no residue remains to catch the next round of dust. The same treatment goes to the top of the fridge, the top of the rangehood and the top edge of the door frames.

Rangehood and filter

The filter that has been soaking comes out, gets brushed along the direction of the mesh, gets rinsed hard with hot water and drains completely before it goes back. If the water runs out of it cloudy, soak it again. A saturated filter stops pulling air properly, so more grease stays airborne and lands on the cupboard tops you have just done. While the filter is out, degrease the cavity above it, the fan housing you can reach and the underside of the hood, then the outer surfaces. Stainless gets wiped along the grain, never across it.

Splashback, stovetop and where steel wool belongs

Splashbacks take the same alkaline approach as the cupboards, with water marks the exception. Glass and stainless splashbacks carrying mineral marks need citric acid once the grease is gone. Grease first, then mineral, because the other way round the acid never reaches the deposit through the film.

Stovetops depend on the surface. Gas trivets and cast iron go into the soak and come out to steel wool. Enamel and glass cooktops get degreaser, dwell time and a plastic scraper held at a low angle, which lifts burnt-on sugar far better than any amount of scrubbing. Steel wool is a main tool for us, but only where a surface can take it.

• Fine for: oven racks, cast iron trivets, stainless sinks worked along the grain, oven door glass.
• Not for: glass and ceramic cooktops, laminate and stone benchtops, painted or powder-coated surfaces, non-stick, anything anodised or coated, and any tap with a brushed or coloured finish.
• If you are unsure, test in a hidden spot first and use the lightest grade that does the job.

The oven, honestly

An oven that has not been done in a year is not a 20 minute job. Budget 60 to 120 minutes of hands-on work, and expect most of it to go on the racks and the inside of the door glass. That is not slow work. That is what the job is. If a quote implies otherwise, either the oven is already in good condition or the racks are not being done.

1. 1Racks out and into the hot soak at the very start, along with any side rails and trays.
2. 2Degreaser into the cavity, on the walls, roof and floor, and left to dwell. Re-apply anywhere it dries out.
3. 3Scrape the floor and the corners with a plastic scraper before wiping, so you are removing carbon rather than spreading it.
4. 4Door glass after the cavity work. Many oven doors let you get between the panes if the door comes apart, and if yours does not, accept what you can reach and say so rather than pretending.
5. 5Racks out of the soak, steel wool along the bars, rinse, dry, back in.
6. 6Wipe the cavity out with clean water twice, then leave the door open to dry.

We do this without caustic oven products and without fumes, which matters when someone is home, when there are pets in the house, or when the kitchen is open plan and the smell would carry through everything. It costs more time. That is the trade, and we have made it deliberately across the whole natural house cleaning standard: fragrance-free, no bleach, no antibacterial agents, no dyes, and none of the ingredients we exclude.

The fridge, including the parts behind it

Shelves and drawers come out and get washed in the sink, not wiped in place. Glass shelves need to come up to room temperature before hot water goes near them. Inside, plain warm water and a mild alkaline is enough, because a fridge interior is a food surface and does not want residue left on it.

Almost everyone misses 2 areas. The first is the door seals, where the rubber concertinas and holds crumbs, spills and sometimes visible mould: run a soft brush into each fold, then dry the fold properly, because leaving it damp is how it returns. The second is the condenser coils at the back or underneath, which collect a dense felt of dust that makes the motor work harder. HEPA vacuum those gently with a brush attachment, with the fridge switched off at the wall.

Kickboards and the gap beside the fridge

The toe space under the cupboards and the narrow gap beside the fridge are where everything ends up: crumbs, dried spills, hair, and in an older Brisbane home, a surprising volume of fine dust. Pull the fridge out if the floor allows it. Vacuum the gap with the crevice tool, then wash the sides of the cabinetry and the fridge itself, which will carry its own grease film on the side facing the stove. Kickboards get vacuumed along their base first, then washed, then the floor edge behind them. If a kickboard clips off, take it off.

Sink and drain, then the floors

The sink is the last wet fixture because it has been your soaking bath all day. Citric acid does the work here: in the bowl, around the tap base, and on the aerator, which can be unscrewed and dropped into a small cup of citric acid solution for 20 minutes while you finish elsewhere. Rinse everything thoroughly. For the drain, hot water and bicarb followed by more hot water shifts ordinary build-up. Bicarb and vinegar together mostly fizz and cancel each other out, which is theatre rather than cleaning, and I would rather tell you that than sell it to you. None of these are disinfectants and they are not meant to be, which is worth knowing before you assume otherwise: see do natural cleaners disinfect. The goal is physical removal of soil, and that is what leaves a kitchen genuinely clean.

Floors are always last, in every room, for the same reason: everything you dislodge from above lands on them. Vacuum, then mop, then leave. Working this way is the whole point of the correct order to clean a room, and it is the difference between finishing once and finishing 3 times.

How long a real kitchen deep clean takes

A neglected kitchen on its own is commonly 4 to 6 hours of genuine work, and it is usually the reason a whole home reset for a 3 bedroom house runs 10 to 15 hours, normally 2 cleaners across a day. That reset is not a different list from a regular clean. It is the same list on a home that has not had it done yet, so every item takes longer. We charge $85 per hour and we price the time, because a clean priced on speed has to make up the missing minutes with harsher chemistry.

The tools and the effort do the work. The chemistry is only there to make the tools effective, which is why fragrance, bleach and antibacterial agents can come out of the kit without the clean suffering.

Once a kitchen has had its reset, keeping it there is straightforward. Weekly or fortnightly covers the daily surfaces, and the higher detail work rotates across visits, so the rangehood filter, the cupboard tops and the oven each come around on a cycle rather than being done every time or never at all. If you would rather not give up a weekend to it, the deep clean reset is this method applied to the whole house, and you can tell us which areas matter most before we start so those get the priority.