Key Takeaways
- Soaking greasy oven racks overnight in hot water with dish soap and dryer sheets is a surprisingly effective cleaning hack that leaves them gleaming.
- The active ingredients in dryer sheets break down baked-on grease, and their soft texture makes wiping grime away easier after soaking.
- While effective, this method takes several hours, and some pros prefer using baking soda paste.
Cleaning oven racks has to be one of the most tedious household chores ever. Even when you’re extra careful, it still ends up with splatters, spills, and super-stubborn, baked-on grease. But one rack-cleaning hack has been making the rounds lately—and it uses one of the most out-of-left-field items ever that you probably already have on hand: dryer sheets. Yes, dryer sheets. Intrigued, I decided to put this viral hack to the test.
How to Clean Oven Racks with Dryer Sheets
I thought this would be as simple as rubbing a fresh dryer sheet over greasy oven racks, but it’s a bit more involved than that. Along with dryer sheets, you’ll need dish soap, hot water, an old towel, and a bathtub (or extra large bin for soaking). Also, you need at least a few hours, but ideally a full overnight soak.
Wendy Rose Gould
- Place an old towel in the bathtub. This helps prevent scratches, and also absorbs some of the grease that melts away.
- Place your racks on the towel. Remove oven racks and place them on top of the towel in the bathtub or a large basin. You don’t need to do any prep work on the racks.
- Fill with extra hot water: Fill the tub with really hot water. It should be enough to cover the racks entirely.
- Add dish soap. Add about ⅓ to ¼ cup of dish soap to the hot water and swish it around a bit to disperse the soap. Dish soap that’s tough on grease is best.
- Add 5 to 10 dryer sheets. Scatter five to 10 dryer sheets (about two per rack is good) and then let them soak.
- Soak overnight. Ideally, you should let the racks soak overnight. If you don’t have that much time, a good four to six hours works.
- Use the sheets to clean the racks. Drain the water (it’ll be cold now, but that’s fine), but do not discard the dryer sheets. Instead, use them to wipe the racks.
Do Dryer Sheets Really Clean Oven Racks?
Yes, surprisingly dryer sheets really do clean oven racks. I followed the above steps to a T, and I’ll admit that I was incredibly skeptical. Not only did this cleaning hack work, but it actually surpassed my expectations and was able to eliminate burnt grease that’s been stubbornly hanging on even after a heavy-duty oven cleaning I did a couple months ago.
Curious as to why this works, I reached out to Neel Parekh, cleaning professional and founder of MaidThis. He says, “When you soak dryer sheets in hot water, the quaternary ammonium compounds in them break down and loosen baked-on grease. The compounds get through the grease layers, and when the sheet texture acts like a soft scrubber the grease is easier to wipe away.”
Wendy Rose Gould
There is a caveat, of course: This takes a long time. His preferred method is a baking soda paste, and this is how he teaches all his cleaning professionals to clean ovens.
“We mix baking soda with water to make a thick paste, put a lot of it on the racks, and let it sit for at least two hours,” he says. “Baking soda is cheaper and does not leave any chemical residue behind when you rinse it off, which is important when you are working in someone’s home.”
He says you can also use commercial degreasers and scrub brushes, which work together to clean up grease in less than 20 minutes.
