Kitchen Deep Cleaning: How to Get Rid of Old Grease for Good

A Dhaka kitchen is a hard-working room. Daily frying, tempering, a gas stove running for hours — every one of those puts an oil mist into the air that lands on cabinet doors, walls, the ceiling and the fan. Six months of that and the film stops wiping off. This is how to get it back, and how kitchen cleaning stops being a losing battle.

Why grease stops coming off

Fresh oil wipes away. Old oil does not — it oxidises, thickens and traps dust until it is closer to varnish than to oil. Warm soapy water slides over it. You need to break it chemically first, then remove it.

Two things cut it: alkaline degreaser and heat. Together they work far better than either alone.

The order that saves you an hour

1. Empty the counters. Everything off, so nothing is cleaned around.
2. Start at the ceiling and the fan. Grease drips downwards; clean it last and it lands on what you already did.
3. Spray the degreaser and wait. Cabinet fronts, hood, backsplash, stove. Ten minutes. Do not scrub immediately — you are just moving it around.
4. Warm water, microfibre, one direction. Not circles; circles smear.
5. Stove and burners. Burner caps and grates come off — soak them in hot water with degreaser while you do everything else.
6. Sink last, floor after that.

The chimney filter

This is the single most neglected thing in a Bangladeshi kitchen, and the reason a hood stops pulling smoke.

Take the mesh filters out. Fill a basin with the hottest water you can handle, add dish soap and a generous spoon of baking soda, and soak them for 30 minutes. The water will turn brown — that is the point. Brush with an old toothbrush, rinse, and dry completely before putting them back. Wet filters rust.

Do this monthly if you fry regularly. If the mesh is so clogged that light will not pass through it, it needs replacing, not cleaning.

Things worth knowing

• Do not use strong alkaline degreaser on aluminium — it stains it black permanently. Test on the inside of a cabinet door first.
• Baking soda paste (soda + a little water) is excellent on baked-on stove spills and safe on almost everything.
• Vinegar is for scale, not grease. Kettle, tap and sink mineral deposits — yes. Oil — no.
• Clean the fridge gasket while you are there. That rubber seal is where mould starts, and it is what keeps your electricity bill down.

Food safety, not just looks

A kitchen is the one room where cleaning is a health issue. After the grease is gone, sanitise the surfaces you prepare food on — and use a food-safe sanitiser, rinsed properly. Chopping boards, the tap handle and the fridge door handle are touched constantly and cleaned rarely.

Keep raw meat on the bottom shelf of the fridge so nothing drips onto food below it. A clean-looking fridge with the wrong layout still makes people ill.

A routine that holds

• Daily — wipe the stove while it is still warm. Ten seconds now saves ten minutes later.
• Weekly — cabinet fronts, backsplash, sink, bin.
• Monthly — chimney filters, fridge inside, the top of the cabinets.
• Twice a year — a full kitchen cleaning service, including inside the cabinets and behind the appliances.

When to hand it over

If the grease predates you — a rented flat, a kitchen you inherited — start with a professional clean and then keep it up yourself. That is far less work than trying to claw back three years of buildup on a Friday.

Our kitchen cleaning service starts at ৳1,200 and covers degreasing the hood and filters, stove, cabinet fronts and interiors, backsplash and the sink. Add refrigerator cleaning and the whole room is done in one visit.

Book online or call +880 1719-950059.