What is the best way to clean your oven? There isn’t one, according to the experts

Viral hacks, self-cleaning, harsh chemicals – every option is terrible. A funny thing about being a cleaning expert is that it’s a bit like being a doctor at a cocktail party: everyone wants to show you their proverbial mole. Usually, this is fine – in fact, it often leads to an interesting or hilarious conversation, or both.

But there is one common cleaning question that I do not like to answer, that I find myself, if not outright lying about, at the very least doing some impressive fudging and fibbing to avoid answering directly. The question is: “What do you use to clean your oven ?” The problem with oven cleaning Rachel Hoffman, a cleaning expert and the author of Unf*ck Your Habitat , sums up the problem of oven cleaners thusly: “Either it either works and wants to kill you, or it doesn’t work all that well, but you can breathe.”.