Hey, gang—Chia Mom here, reporting from the little slice of fair-trade, organic, pesticide-free heaven otherwise known as Chez Chia. As always, I’m here to tell you the easiest way to live a healthy life just like the one me and my fabulous family enjoy, with as much belittling detail as possible. Today we’re tackling the task of cleaning your kitchen, something that’s necessary for all of us from time to time, even if you don’t have hired help like me. But with my carefree tips, you’ll look forward to this unpopular task so much, you’ll start to think of cooking as a gigantic nuisance required to get to the good part. Ready? Let’s get clean!
Get those pesky smudges off your stainless steel appliances
Our good friend vinegar is your go-to here. All it takes is a generous supply of unbleached cheesecloth and a bucket of vinegar water (use three parts water to one part vinegar). I like to use an artisan bucket made from hand-buffed reclaimed cedar, but any bucket that’s not made of plastic will do—you know the Chia Mom pledge: no plastic, ever ever ever!
Industrially-produced vinegar is another no-no. Only clean with vinegar made from apples gathered within a three-block radius of your home (if you’re not in the right climate for apples, dwarf wild durians are an acceptable substitute), and fermented using a mer passed down at least generations in your family.
But I also have a top-secret tip for making the smudges go away forever! Ready? My kids just couldn’t be counted on to keep their pesky maws off the fridge doors, so I whipped out the solar-powered belt sander and, in three stages over a few months, just blasted their fingerprints away (make sure you have lots of absorbent drop cloths down when you do this). I also found that now that they have no fingerprints left makes it difficult for them to grab things, so I bought them all many pairs of organic cotton gloves with grippy rubber nubs on the palms. Turns out the gloves keep smudges off appliances even when you don’t do D.I.Y. fingerprint removal surgery, so to save time, just skip that step.
A sacrificial calf really brightens up your oven
To get the baked-on gunk out of your oven, go purchase an unweaned calf from your friendly local cruelty-free farmer. The build a pyre of bricks in front of the oven, lay the calf over it, and swath it in fresh sage and rosemary. (This is a great way to make a dent in that pesky pile of bricks you baked in the sun leftover from building your neighborhood’s communal wood-fired oven.) Take a long, sharp knife (not serrated!) and plunge it into the calf’s still-beating heart, and then light the pyre (for fuel, we like old grape vines best) and shove the whole works into the oven. You’ll probably need some help with this, so call over a few of your undocumented domestic workers. Keep the oven door cracked open a hair for three days, making sure to maintain excellent ventilation the entire time (enlist your kids to fan it manually for a fun family activity). Once the smoldering ceases, open the oven, sweep out the ashes, and feast on a fine meal of roasted veal, knowing the whole time your oven is the shiniest on the block…all without resorting to toxic chemicals.
Give your sink a good oiling
There’s a reason everyone’s making a fuss about coconut oil: it’s a real miracle substance, and not just in recipes! Seize its wonder and give your sink a good rub-down with coconut oil once every 1.38 days. Only use extra-virgin, unrefined coconut oil. If you don’t have the good fortune of having your own hand-operated coconut press, it’s okay to shop online; try www.exclusivedelisionalgroves.com. Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know about coconut oil’s amazing ability to make your sink gleam. It won’t disinfect your sink, but with a shine like that, what’s a few billion germs?
Polish copper cookware without chemicals
You readers all know I only use beautiful things, which is why I love copper pans. Their luster isn’t so pretty once the copper oxidizes, though, and right after leading a mindful and conscious life, appearance and perfection is what counts the most. For a long time I used that old trick of coarse salt and half a lemon, aiming to polish my fleet of 15 hand-hammered copper saucepans every 12 hours: once after lunch, and once after Mr. Chia and I recovered from our nightly lovemaking marathon. (“How do you get so much done, Chia Mom?” is the number one questions I get from you readers. To which I reply, “What do you think 2 a.m. is for?”)
But when my oldest daughter pointed out that a simple chemical reaction is what makes the lemon and salt brighten up the copper, the bottom fell out of my world. Readers, I must be honest. “Lemons have chemicals?” I wailed. You know how I feel about the horrors of chemicals. For days I sulked, and I may have even skipped a few of my scheduled ritualistic oven-cleaning calf pyres. I tried buffing the oxidized copper with chia seeds—chia seeds fix everything!—but all they did was roll all over the counter and floor.
Then inspiration struck, as it does when we’re at our lowest points. I called up my contractor and paired with him to construct a sleek, transparent chamber filled with a proprietary blend of inert gasses. I keep my copper pans in there for both display and storage. As long as they’re in the chamber, they don’t develop the patina. I do remove them from the chamber when it’s time to cook, because sometimes you just have to chance it. (It helps that each of the the kids has an assigned copper saucepan to buff for an hour as part of their daily chores.) The entire project ran under $100,000. If you’d like to make your own, visit the ChiaShoppe on my site, where I’m selling the plans. Enter the discount code TYPE-A for ten percent off!
Remember, the only thing more important than cooking healthy meals for your family is looking great on multiple online platforms. A gloriously clean kitchen knocks out two birds with one stone. See you next April 1!
Chia Mom is a popular lifestyle blogger who loves humble brags, homeschooling her 13 precocious kids, and shaming other parents who don’t bother to buy GMO-free products for their families. She lives with her incredible husband just to the left of reality.