Illustration for article titled How To Clean The Dirt Between Your Oven Glass DoorsPhoto: Africa Studio (Shutterstock)

Deep cleaning typically involves scrubbing spaces that you rarely consider. This may mean you don’t even know how to clean them. I recently started cleaning my own oven and after scrubbing down the glass window it still looked pretty dirty. It was then that I realized that the glass with the double pane was dirty on the inside.

At that point, I dismissed it as impossible and gave up on getting used to the misty view through my oven door but a professional house cleaner Vanessa Amaro came to the rescue. This will take you between the glass door of an oven to restore your clear view of the cooking.

Start at the bottom of your oven

First things first: do you have a grill or drawer at the bottom of your oven? If you can pull out the bottom part, you have a drawer. If the door folds down like your oven, you have a grill. Let’s start with the ovens with a lower drawer.

Open the lower drawer

In order to get into the two panes of the glass door of your stove, you will need to remove the lower drawer. Under the oven door, you will see a narrow opening that runs along the bottom edge of the door. Vanessa Amaro suggests using a store-bought dust brush that is long and relatively thin. You can also wrap a washcloth around a yardstick with elastic bands to hold it in place.

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Soak the cloth in your favorite cleaning solution (white vinegar and water work fine), insert the cleaning brush into the opening, and scrub it. When you’re done, rinse the cloth and one last time to rinse the glass.

If you have a broiler, remove the oven door

If you have a grill and not a drawer at the bottom of your oven, you’ll need to remove the door to get in between the window pane. It sounds like a job for a professional (you could hire someone), but doing it yourself isn’t as scary as it sounds. The oven door hinges are designed so that the door can be easily removed, and they usually snap back into place. The DIY site The Art of Doing Stuff is there detailed instructions to remove the oven door.

Insert your screwdriver into the back of the tab and slide it forward. This will unlock the hinge. Do it on both hinges of the oven door.

Now close the oven door to the point where it will no longer close and then lift it straight up. The door should pull out very easily.

Depending on the make and model of your oven, you can press on a tab that releases the hinge to remove the door. After removing the door, the two panes can separate so you can clean each side with a sponge and cleaning solution. Otherwise, you can slide your trustworthy yardstick between the glass with a cleaning cloth.

If there is a metal cover over the opening at the bottom of the oven door, simply remove the screws (put them in a safe place to reinstall later) and follow the same cleaning instructions. You can see professionals demonstrate it at General Electric’s YouTube instructional video.

Cleaning between the glass of the oven isn’t the funnest job, but hopefully you’ll find that a little discomfort goes a long way.