Skip The Scrubbing & Try An Easy Trick To Get Your Microwave Spotless In Minutes

Microwaves have a bad habit of getting pretty nasty pretty quickly. Even if you carefully cover all of your food, splatters and stains seem to coat the interior after only a few uses. Theoretically, all you need to clean your microwave is a little bit of steam and a rag. However, unless you just love cleaning, these spots tend to stay caked on for a few days, which makes them almost impossible to clean up without some intense scrubbing. There are a few tricks to make those stubborn messes much easier to clean, though. One is easy, only requiring a bit of water, vinegar, and a few minutes of your time. Vinegar is a versatile cleaning tool, after all, so this shouldn't come as a surprise.

To clean a microwave using vinegar, you need to get a bowl and fill it with about a cup of water and a few tablespoons of vinegar. Once your bowl is filled with the liquid, set it into the microwave and heat it. You don't have to do it for long, just two to five minutes. To prevent the risk of overheating, do it in small bursts. Mostly, you want some of that liquid to evaporate and get the interior of your microwave nice and steamy. 

Then, carefully take the bowl out and wipe down the microwave. You should be able to simply use a rag or sponge to get rid of most of the residue. Some people dip their cleaning tool of choice into the water to reuse it. You can also use the vinegar mixture in different ways to make your kitchen sparkle. 

If this hack doesn't get all the gunk out the first time, don't worry. Clean up what you can, and repeat the process. The vinegar and water combo will loosen up any tough materials, and repeated use certainly helps. You can repeat it as many times as necessary until you get all the spots off.

The reason vinegar sometimes works better than just water is partially because of its acidic properties. Acid does a decent job of removing stains and spills by breaking them down. It's not perfect, but it works really well in a pinch. Vinegar also has the added bonus of being somewhat antimicrobial. Again, because of the acidity, a fair amount of pathogens that can grow on food can be broken down, including E. coli. This is why so many people use it to clean fruits and vegetables. While it's not the perfect cleaning agent, for something like wiping down and removing food spills from a microwave, it comes in handy.

Finally, most microwaves have a bit of an odor. Cooking releases odors, and then when the door to the microwave is often left closed, it traps the smells, especially when there are still food bits inside. However, not everyone can just leave the microwave open between uses. While vinegar might not have the most pleasant smell, it does help to hide and sometimes completely remove smells your microwave might have in it. There are a few downsides to cleaning with vinegar, though, which you should take time to learn before using it too often.