How to Clean Your Refrigerator
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Do you feel like whenever you go into your refrigerator to grab a drink or some food you almost gag on the smell of old food, or you grab something and your hand is sticky from picking up a jar that spilled over? It’s important to keep your refrigerator clean and smelling fresh, as it is the place where you store most of your food and drinks. Nobody wants to lose their appetite just because of the smell of their fridge. In this week's blog, we dive into the proper steps on how to clean your refrigerator so you don’t have to worry about messes in your kitchen.
Prep a Designated Area
You’re most likely going to need to take out all of the food in order to deep clean and have a sparkling clean fridge. To prepare for this, you’re going to need a designated place to store your cold items to ensure they don’t go bad. For refrigerated items, an example of this would be an old refrigerator in the garage, which would be the easiest and most convenient option.
The next best place to store your cold items would be an ice cooler where you typically store drinks and food for a day at the beach or a barbecue. This would work great as it will keep your food cool for long enough since you won’t be cleaning your refrigerator for a long period of time. Lastly, if you don't have either of these options, any bins that you can place bags of ice with the food into to keep the food cold would work just as well.
One Shelf at a Time
If your refrigerator allows, we recommend removing each shelf to be able to scrub any messes or smudges by hand with a closer look. If need be you should also soak your shelves in your sink using warm soapy water. Taking out the shelves also allows you to get a deeper clean around the walls of your fridge. Once you are able to place the shelves back, it’s important to wipe them down with a microfiber cloth and sprayer cleaner.
Don’t Forget About Doors and Drawers
This step is very similar to the previous one, as you will want to remove the drawers from the refrigerator to get a deep scrub in the rest of the fridge interior. If it’s able to fit, soak the drawers in warm soapy water in the sink, and if it’s unable to fit, spray them with the cleaner of choice and wipe them down. We also recommend using baking soda, as when mixed with water it will become a paste great for scrubbing and it keeps the refrigerator smelling fresh.
While leaving the drawers to soak and dry, you can wipe down any other gunk, food scraps, and spoilage that may have collected at the bottom of the fridge under the drawers. Before placing the drawers back, it is also important to wipe down the inside of the door storage, as this area may have the most spillage since this area is where most sauces are stored. Once completed, the drawers can slide back into their rightful place.
Polish the Outside
Before putting all of your food back into the fridge, you may as well make the outside clean and shiny. If the outside of your fridge is stainless steel, we recommend using the polishes and cleaners from our previous video to give it the proper look without ruining the finish.
Clean the Food Itself
Before putting back all the food that caused this mess, you should clean any messy jars or containers, and sort out any food that may have gone bad causing any unpleasant smell. If there are any food containers or jars that seem messy or dirty, it doesn’t hurt to give it a quick wipe-down to make sure everything is looking pristine.
There are our suggestions for cleaning your refrigerator, and if you are looking for the right refrigerator, here is our video on our favorites for your home.
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