How To Clean Your Refrigerator With Baking Soda

There are few appliances in the kitchen that are as vital in use or more frequently visited than the trusty old refrigerator. Given the amount of foot traffic that appliance sees, and the fact that it tends to hold foods and liquids that splash, drip, and stick to fingers, it hardly comes as a shock that the fridge can get messy quickly.

That's true no matter what brand of refrigerator you choose to buy. There's no set schedule for cleaning a refrigerator, but if its interior and exterior need freshening up, you can do it without heavy-duty chemicals like bleach. In fact, an item you almost certainly have in your kitchen can do the job, since baking soda is generally regarded as a first-rate cleaner and deodorizer, which is why it works so well at killing smells in kitchen sink drains.

Just FYI — you can also use baking soda to clean your washing machine if need be. You will, of course, need to be careful when using it to clean that machine or a refrigerator, as baking soda is a mild abrasive. For that reason, avoid using it to clean any refrigerator with a fingerprint-resistant coating, as abrasives can damage the coating. If your fridge is coating-free and messy, cleaning it with baking soda is pretty easy.

For the record, you can't clean your refrigerator using only baking soda. Given its abrasive nature, it should go without saying that using dry baking soda could cause damage to your appliance's interior and exterior surfaces. Instead, make a paste by mixing the household substance with warm water. From there, you'll also need distilled white vinegar, a sponge, and a couple of good microfiber towels. With that gear around, follow these steps to clean your fridge with baking soda:

1. In a bowl, mix three parts baking soda and one part warm water into a paste. The goal is to make an easily spreadable mix that isn't too thick or too thin, ensuring no dry baking soda remains. For larger refrigerators, increase the contents of the mixture in the same ratio.
2. For tougher stains, you can spray lemon juice or distilled white vinegar over the applied paste later.
3. Remove all items from the fridge interior. Ditto for exterior surfaces.
4. Dip the sponge into the baking soda paste and apply it to shelving and interior surfaces, focusing on visible stains and sticky areas.
5. Gently scrub the mixture for stubborn messes.
6. Allow the compound to sit for 10 to 15 minutes.
7. In a bowl, mix 50-50 distilled white vinegar and water.
8. Dampen a microfiber cloth with this mixture, then wipe away the baking soda.

Repeat the process for lingering smells or heavy stains. You can also use the baking soda compound and procedure to spot-clean the refrigerator's exterior if needed. You'll want to avoid scrubbing stainless steel surfaces, however, because, you know, it's abrasive.