Use This Checklist to Spring-Clean Your Kitchen

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One of the trickiest things about cleaning is knowing where to start—and, once you’ve started, where to go from there. When spring cleaning your kitchen, that can be overwhelming, since there’s so much to clean and it’s all pretty important, seeing as the room is where you prepare your food and all. You need a handy checklist to make sure you’re getting after every nook and cranny.  

Kitchen cleaning tools checklist

Before you start cleaning, take a minute to make sure you have everything you need. Nothing saps your mojo quite like having to leave the house to buy supplies. Make sure you have all of the following:

• Plain dish soap, like Dawn ($3.58) 

• A good brush set, like the OXO Good Grips kitchen appliance cleaning set ($10.99)

• A basic scrubbing sponge ($5.79 for six) 

• A heavy-duty melamine sponge, like the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Ultra Thick ($8.94 for five)

• Baking soda ($7.99)

• White vinegar ($11.99)

• Easy Off Heavy Duty oven cleaner ($4.97)

• Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner ($6.97 for two bottles)

• A solid sweeper, like the Ronsung silicone squeegee broom ($13.99)

• A mop, like the O-Cedar EasyWring RinseClean set ($49.97)

Kitchen cleaning checklist 

Now it’s time to move on to the various things you need to actually clean. Start from the top and make your way down, so you clean all the dirt you’ve knocked to the floor at the very end. In general, here’s everything you need to take care of: 

• Start by removing your oven racks and putting them in the bathtub with dish soap and water to clean them. They should be soaking while you do everything else.

• Steam your microwave by nuking a quartered lemon in a bowl with a cup of water for three minutes. Since it has to sit in there for five minutes after that, move on to cleaning the exterior with a mixture of one part vinegar to one part water. Once the five minutes is up, wipe the steam from inside the microwave. 

• Move on to the fridge. Remove all the food and wipe down your shelving and interior with soapy water, then make sure you dry it with paper towels or a clean rag. You can also pop your fridge shelves in the bathtub with the oven racks if they’re really dirty, but that may hold up part of your other cleaning efforts, since you’ll have food all over your counter while your shelves soak. Try to attempt this when you’re low on food, so you don’t have as much to deal with, or put your food back along the bottom of the fridge after you’ve wiped down the shelf-less interior with a mixture of one cup of baking soda and a gallon of water. 

• Clean your upper kitchen cabinets, removing everything inside. And don’t forget to clean the tops of them, either, with a sponge and soapy water. 

• Do the lower kitchen cabinets now, using the same methods: Pull everything out and clean inside with the crevice tool on the OXO brush set, then soapy water. 

• While all the appliances are out on the counter, clean them one by one. There are detailed ways to clean everything from toasters to coffee machines and grinders to air fryers, so do each one before putting it away. Make sure the cupboards and appliances are all dry before putting anything back.

• Next, move straight to the stovetop. Use baking soda to clean the burners by slowly adding some to a cup of water and mixing until it forms a paste you can coat the burners with. With your racks still in the bathtub, you can scrub the interior of your oven with oven cleaner. After 20 minutes, remove the baking soda paste from the burners with a damp cloth.

• Once you’ve used the sink to clean your appliances, you have to clean the sink itself. If it’s stainless steel, use an abrasive cleaner, like Bar Keepers Friend ($11.17 for a pack of two canisters) and a scouring pad. For anything else, a soft cloth and soapy water will work. (One extra step you can take is to polish your chrome fixtures with baby oil, which makes them look super sparkly.)

• This is a good time to clean the walls between your cabinets and your back splash. Dish soap and water will work, as will the Magic Eraser, but if you have cooking grease splatters to deal with, try mixing one cup of vinegar, one tablespoon of baking soda, and 1/8 teaspoon of soap with three cups of water to create a degreasing spray, then wiping the mess with that.

• You’ve cleared the countertops of the appliances from the cupboard and likely gotten crud from the stovetop all over them, so it’s time to tackle those now. Remove anything that might be on them, use the crevice tool to get crumbs out of the corners, and then go in with soap and water or all-purpose cleaner. If you have granite countertops, be extra careful: Use a non-scratch sponge or rag and soap and water, nothing else. 

• By now, the floors are dirty, but that’s no problem: You’re almost done. First, get your oven racks and fridge shelves out of the bathtub and dry them well. Put them back where they belong. Once that’s done, corral any debris or crumbs on the floor with your broom and mop the whole thing with soapy water. Go relax in another room while it dries. 

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