How to Clean Kitchen Cabinets

Cabinets might seem simple to clean but you might come up against some serious cleaning challenges when you go to tackle your cabinets and there are definitely some things that you need to take into consideration before you get the job done so in this article i’m gonna walk you through how to clean your kitchen cabinet’s exterior and we’ll also talk about a few interior kitchen cleaning cabinet tips as well.

Some quick Do’s & Don’ts: Before we approach cleaning anything we want to know what it is we’re dealing with whether it’s an appliance or a finish or a piece of furniture cabinets are no different you could have a wood cabinet a laminate cabinet and then you could you know you could have a wood cabinet that’s not painted then you can have different types of finishes on the cabinet all of that is going to contribute to how you need to tackle cleaning well I know it sounds easy to grab something like a magic eraser to scrub all of the crap off your cabinets I want you to stop and think twice magic erasers or other abrasive products or cleaning tools like heavy duty sponges or an abrasive cleanser can actually damage the finish of your cabinet which is something you don’t want you’ll have those permanent marks that really won’t be able to get rid of so when we’re approaching our cabinets we want to make sure that we’re not using any abrasive products or tools and the other thing we want to stay away from is anything that is a solvent in other words anything that can dissolve a finish like paint or varnish because that’s going to lead to an uneven finish on your surface and frankly something that is probably difficult or maybe not possible to repair.

Products & Tools: For the products and tools that you should be using I always recommend to start with the simplest stuff and work your way up only as needed that way you’re not using anything overly harsh on a surface that could have done just fine with something much more basic so from a tools standpoint you want to have good quality microfiber cloths and a cleaning toothbrush and perhaps steam cleaner which i’ll cover off in a sec now for products for general cleaning of your surface you can use our basic all-purpose cleaner two cups of water a little squirt of dish soap or a store-bought all-purpose cleaner that you have hanging around for grease you know stains or fingerprints you can use something like an enzyme-based cleaner, the reason you want to use an enzyme cleaner to deal with fingerprints or grease because enzymes actually digest or break down grease instead of you having to apply something harsh like a solvent or do any thorough scrubbing which are the two things that we know are going to ruin that finish so enzyme cleaners are really important you can also use something like steam to deal with grease which I can demonstrate for you and finally for those points of contact handles pulls doorknobs etc you can grab a disinfectant and make sure that you’re treating those specific areas with a disinfectant.

Cleaning the Exterior: To clean the exterior of your cabinets you know if there’s like a little stain or mark there you’re just doing a general cleaning this is how I would approach it I would take a bottle of all-purpose cleaner and I would spray starting from the top working my way to the bottom and i’d work section by section so this entire chunk of cabinets I would do it once both the top and the bottom by the time i’ve done my spraying and maybe i’ve done one or two other things about five minutes will have passed that will be enough time for the all-purpose cleaner to sort of do its thing work its way into any dirt surface marks etc and then I can come back and give each cabinet a wipe down with a microfiber cloth using the s pattern just working my way from the top to the bottom making sure I get into all of the different grooves now a couple of things you might want to consider doing if you do have any grooves in your panel or any fancy footwork I don’t know exactly the design term for it but to get in here every now and then i’m not saying you know times a year but i’m saying maybe once or twice a year you can use a cleaning toothbrush just to clean out any dirt you know grease anything that’s sort of built up when I do heavy duty move and move out cleans that’s often something that makes a really big difference kitchen cabinets also feature one of our favorite topics of late points of contact so what you would want to consider as well is to simply spray this area with a disinfectant or you can use a disinfecting wipe to give it a wipe down for a couple of seconds to scrub so you have to follow package instructions to make sure that you’re getting the maximum benefit from your disinfecting product whatever it may be or you can treat it with some rubbing alcohol but again you have to be mindful of the type of finish and make sure that whatever disinfecting product you’re using is safe for the particular finish that you have i’d say the most difficult thing to clean off of a cabinet is grease whether it’s a greasy fingerprint or greasy splatter that’s built up over time that is going to be your biggest challenge what you can use is an enzyme cleaner I mentioned this earlier, we also have a article on enzyme cleaners and if you’re curious you can check that out but you want to spray the enzyme cleaner on the surface and you want to get it very wet it should be dripping wet enzyme cleaners only work if the surface is wet for a few minutes typically two to five minutes once that’s done you can then take your microfiber cloth and wipe the lovely thing about enzyme cleaners is you really don’t have to do any scrubbing the product does the heavy lifting for you and by the time the product has been wiped off your grease should be gone now if you have a steam cleaner handy steam is really a great way to get rid of grease so you would just load up your steamer with water you plug it in you would use the appropriate tool nothing with scrubbing you would just want to aim straight steam over the stain itself you can spray it on the surface and then have a cloth handy to wipe up any residual moisture or liquid the cabinets are going to look great steam is very easy but you do need to have a steam cleaner so the choice is yours.

Interior Cleaning tips: To clean the interior of your cabinets it’s pretty straight forward in fact you can use any of the products that we’ve already talked about to tackle the exact same issues inside I will say if you have a steam cleaner it is really easy to just blast some steam in there and give everything a good wipe one thing I will recommend particularly if it’s a pantry or somewhere where there are lots of crackers and chips and nuts you know where this is going is to remove everything and then give it a really good vacuum using a vacuum with a brush attachment or even a little handheld broom just to sweep all of the schmutz out of there before you start wiping down you might also notice that there are some stains or some slide marks from you know repeated motions of you like sliding cans out if you do see that something you might want to consider is using some shelf liner it’s pretty inexpensive and the nice thing is is it preserves the surface inside your cabinet and you can get kind of fancy with it and get you know pretty prints you have fun with it whatever you want now the final thing i’ll tell you about the interior cabinets is if you notice they’re a little bit smelly quick fix just put a box of baking soda in there it’s actually a great trick for you know your spice cupboard or any area where you’re storing anything that you know it might have a bit of an off smell such an easy inexpensive fix and it works like a charm.

Thanks so much for reading and we’ll see you next time.