Cleaning stove fans/vents

Have you ever cleaned that fan/vent above your stove? No? Not in a long time? I bet it's fairly greasy. They are the WORST to clean, thick nasty stuck on grease that doesn't want to come for anything, combined with dust. Um, yeah no thanks. We try to clean ours at least 2 times a year, and even so it gets REALLY bad. There is some hope though, I have found a way to effectively clean all the components of it and it takes much less effort than anything else I have tried (and most of those didn't work at cleaning it).

It involves baking soda and vinegar. YAY!!! 2 super effective cleaning items that are both fairly cheap. It does take a lot of both to get every part of ours clean, but a large jug of cleaning strength vinegar is only about $1.50 here at the commissary and baking soda is like .$.80 for a small box. Still cheaper than most cleaning solutions, even if you use a lot of it.

I start off by filling the sink about 1/4 of the way full with vinegar and then adding some super hot water (I use this to soak the really nasty pieces beforehand). Next I pour just a bit of vinegar in one of my glass measuring cups and grab an old toothbrush. Now it's time for the baking soda. On the pieces that aren't really bad, I just jump right in and sprinkle baking soda all over the surface. The baking soda is very important, since it does the scrubbing work for us (it also acts as a whitener). I am not very good at sprinkling, so it's more of dumped in clumps, but it still works.

Add just enough vinegar to make a paste and start scrubbing away. If it's not totally caked in thick greasy residue it shouldn't take much scrubbing at all for that come nice and clean. You will need to rinse your toothbrush with hot water often to make sure they thick greasy dust doesn't stick to it. Here is my toothbrush before a few scrubs:

And here it is after scrubbing for a minute or so:

Gross right? Can you tell that the baking soda is not white? Yeah, no one wants that above their stove. After scrubbing each piece make sure you rinse really well, as baking soda will leave a gritty residue if you don't. I rinse it and use a sponge to make sure I get all of the baking soda off, then set in the rack to dry. 

Before  scrubbing ^^. This one wasn't very caked on and really only took 1 quick minute scrub to get it nice and clean.

After ^. Nice and shiny again. This process can be time consuming with taking the whole thing apart, scrubbing it all, and letting it dry; but it is so worth it. It took me about an hour total to get everything nice and clean (the actual fan, which I forgot to take a picture of was the worst and it took a lot of scrubbing action). It may take longer if yours is worse off, but once you get it clean and keep doing it, it should get better (I really should do it every 3 months or so, but I always forget until I look up and see that nastiness, which is exactly what happened this morning). 

Just don't do what I did and not pay attention while taking it apart. I still haven't gotten it fully back together because I can't figure out how it goes. LOL, totally brain fart moment, and hopefully I will figure it out before midnight.