Cleaning the Appliances!

This is one of the jobs I like the least.  But if I don’t build it into a schedule it just keeps getting pushed to “sometime”.

Tasks:  Defrost the fridge.  Clean the oven.  Clean the dishwasher.  Descale the coffee maker. 

I like to do this on a weekend as that is when electricity rates are at their lowest.  I tell myself this is ecologically better.  But… I’m cheap too.  Scots are notoriously “thrifty” so what better way to honour Hogmanay!

I fortunately have a self cleaning oven.  Don’t be fooled.  It still takes some cleaning, but not like in the past.  The self cleaning is very electricity and time intensive.  So I have to plan on no baking for pretty much a full day.  The oven gets very hot and takes a long time to cool down before the door can be opened and ash removed.  You would think that I have done it enough times that I would remember to take out the grates and hand scrub so they don’t discolour, but too late!  

Confession time here. I’ve never cleaned my dishwasher before.  But if we’re in this together I had better lead on a righteous path.  I ended up searching how to on YouTube. Home Depot has a useful YouTube tutorial that helped me out! And I discovered I had a filter that should be cleaned!  I’m not a heavy user of my dishwasher so fortunately I didn’t have any nasty surprises.  The inside of my dishwasher now shines!

A little anecdote from many years ago.  Many years ago when I was first married and in our first apartment as a couple there was a dishwasher.  A totally new device to both my husband and me. Neither of us had grown up with a dishwasher and had never used one before.  But it was there so “why not?”  I bought dishwasher detergent, filled the dishwasher with used dishes and cutlery and started a cycle.  But it was so noisy! While it was running we couldn’t carry on any conversation in the apartment.  After a couple of cycles we decided that we would only run the dishwasher when we were away.  One day we came home to water on the floor.  Fortunately our apartment was on the ground floor.  I mopped up the lineoleum.  We informed the owner who called in a plumber. The plumber poked around and produced a spoon from the bottom of the dishwasher.  It wasn’t one of our spoons so likely from the previous tenant.  Questions were asked. Didn’t we notice the machine making a lot of noise?  Yes, which is why we didn’t run it when we were at home.  And as neither of us had grown up with dishwashers we were unaware of how loud or quiet they should be.  Once the spoon was removed and the machine working properly again it could easily be run while we were at home doing other things!

Descaling the Nespresso coffee machine was another revelation. I had come across my instruction manual and warranty information when I was closing out the 2025 files. On my last coffee order I purchased descaling solution so was fully prepared to do this right! I thought having the original instruction manual would be helpful. It was not. But apparently everything can be learned on YouTube! Or the handy helpful information from Nespresso website.

And the fridge has had all the corners looked into. Out of date sauces were tossed and languishing eggplant was made into baba ganoush.

The recycling bin is full for this week’s pick up! And we are so close to finishing up getting the kitchen put to rights. When it is done every other month in our year of living Hogmanay will be so much easier! We have momentum on our side!