Environmentally-Friendly Oven Cleaning

My healthy eating challenge has been going well, and today on my day off I felt inspired to deep clean my kitchen. While I don't think any natural cleaner replaces bleach for things like red wine spills on our white countertops, I didn't feel like contaminating our home with caustic and toxic oven cleaner. After researching natural oven cleaner recipes online, most of which involve borax and letting the mixture sit overnight, I decided to give it a go with a cup of baking soda, lemon juice, and apple cider vinegar. Wow--I was surprised that this combination actually worked really well! I used a soft scrubber and used it on the interior of the oven door and glass. After only about ten minutes, it was clean. No toxic fumes, no waiting, just a lot of dipping a washcloth in water and wiping over and over to get the residue off. Voila... Clean sparkling oven, naturally. Next project is the bottom of the oven. I didn't tackle that today because it's not nearly as dirty as the door was, and was much improved with simply a wipe down with a wet paper towel. Yay!