Goo Gone Oven Cleaner

Overall rating: 3 out of 5

We just moved to this duplex and I swear, the oven here us about 30 years old, if not older. It is the same as what my mom had when we moved into our house 20 years ago. It is one of those really old, dial style General Electric. It works pretty well except it is really hard to regulate the heat.

Anyway, so this stove has been used, and that is easy to tell. Used and cooked and I do not know if it has every really been cleaned. The grease and stains are literally "baked" on. So, we headed out to the store for an oven cleaner that had mild to no fumes because of our little girl. So we saw the Goo Gone Oven Cleaner and decided to give it a go.

 Here is our background with Goo Gone, though. My husband and my mom love the brand, swear by it almost. I, on the other hand, am not so convinced. My last job before I became a stay at home mom was in a retail drug store. On my days that I was exhausted from carrying a growing child inside my belly, and did not want to do anything strenuous, I would clean the shelf strips. We were told to use Goo Gone to get the sticky off of the strips, but I would use rubbing alcohol because I would have to scrub with Goo Gone to get the sticky off and then the paper towel would be destroyed in no time and I want to conserve the paper towels. Plus it would leave behind some residue that made the strips look even worse. The rubbing alcohol on the other hand, seemed to work so much better it was quick, easy and the paper towel lasted so much longer.

So in our experiment with the stove, we took it all apart and soaked what we could in a sink full of water and the Goo Gone Oven and Grill Cleaner and soaked the oven by spraying it down as much as we could. We let it soak for several hours before tackling it with as bad as it was. With the oven itself, there was a little difference, but very little. The see in window was a little clearer, but the door was still black. The bottle shows a picture of a grill rack that went from dirty to almost brand new. I was not expecting that degree of change with the Goo Gone, but I hope we might see at least spots of silver under the black. Wrong, it wasn't even touched.

I did see a difference with the silver rings though. There was not a huge improvement, but I did see improvement but I am sue they are probably newer than the stove is. The water that they were soaking in turned black after a full day of soaking, so it was easy to tell that it was getting some of the grime off. So then we scrubbed them and did see a difference even though there was still quite a bit of black on the rings.

So, my conclusion is that the Goo Gone Oven and Grill Cleaner can take several layers of grime off of cooking surfaces, but when it comes to hard to get off, years of caked on grime, there just is not much it can do. I may have given it an impossible task, and I did take that into consideration but I did expect more improvement than what I saw even though it was obvious that it had been able to do some work.

As a side note, if you use this product, make sure you clean it off all the way. Our stove will not let us take the hot metal rings out of the stove and so it was difficult to clean off all of the residue of the Goo Gone. So when we cooked on it the next day, it developed white spots on the hot rings where we must have left some of the Goo Gone and now I am not sure if we can get rid of it. So just be cautious of that.

Resolve Foaming Cleaner

Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

So, my dog is completely house broke, but every since she has had her puppies, she's been having a lot of problems holding in her bowels and she has not been waking us up as she usually does. So, the other morning we woke up to a terrible mess around the house. We do not own a carpet cleaner, and we did not have the extra cash to rent a rug doctor-which does an amazing job by the way. So we immediately headed to the store a few blocks away to get a foaming style carpet cleaner. We debated what to get, 409, Great Value Brand, or Resolve. We decided to go for Resolve, I have used them in the past and they seem to do well. We also did an impulse buy because Resolve also has this handled scrub brush that sprays the foam into the carpet with the pull of a trigger. It sounded a lot cleaner and easier than scrubbing with a towel so we decided to give it a try.

We got home and my husband started on our breakfast while I started spraying the spots. Following the directions on the bottle, I let it set for a few minutes before scrubbing. It was pretty hearty hard labor, so while my husband was melting at the stove, I was singing "It's a Hard Knock Life." I was actually pretty impressed. There are a couple of spots that did not come up all the way, but for the most part you cannot tell the spots were even there. So props to the makers of Resolve for giving me a product that helps me clean well.

Now, here is the negative that I noticed from the Resolve. I had to do a lot of scrubbing to get every bit of the spots up, no big deal physical labor of a house wife is never done (plus strait men just do not clean as well as a woman). But I noticed walking around today that it left my carpet hard and stuck together. So I'm thinking about using a wet towel to go back over those areas to pick up what I guess was left behind. 

Resolve did not ask me to write this, by the way. This is just my own review on a product that I used and mostly liked.

Money Saving Stain Remover Tips:

 Something we came across during our search for the best answer were a couple of inexpensive tricks we were going to try next if the Resolve did not work. One of them I have heard of before and the other I had not. 

• For urine, put salt on it and wait a few minutes before vacuuming it up. The salt absorbs the urine and the smell. This one I have heard of before, not sure how it works or not. If anyone has ever tried this, let me know how it works!
• For stains, of any kind, mix some baking soda and vinegar together until it is a paste. Put it onto the stain and then wait until it dries. When it is dry, simply vacuum it up. I had not heard this one before, but sounds legit. If you have ever tried this, comment and let me know.

Well, there you have it, my review on Resolve Foaming Carpet Cleaner and a few alternative inexpensive methods. Please comment below if you have tried any of the above methods and what you thought and any others that you may know of.

Kaboom

Kaboom Overall Rating: 3 out of 5

Scrubbing Bubbles Overall Rating: 4 out of 5  

I recently tried the somewhat-new product Kaboom Foam-Tastic with Citrus Scent. I'll admit that a lot of why I got it was because it "Sprays on blue, then turns white when clean!" And it most certainly does do that. It smells really nice, too. I am a huge fan of Scrubbing Bubbles, myself. I have been using it for the past 5 years and it has not let me down, but I still had to try the cool sounding new Kaboom.

We recently moved into a duplex and the tub literally looked like it had not been cleaned in a few years. It had black stains on it and looked like someone with really greasy hands had showered because there were hand prints and finger prints at adult height. So, I broke out my Scrubbing Bubbles almost immediately. It did a pretty good job except there was still a pretty bad stain around the bottom of the tub. I waited a few days and then tried it again, granted I did not do any scrubbing myself since there claim is that the bubbles do it for you. It still did not seem to touch the stain.

So, off to Wal-Mart I went. I saw the Kaboom on the self and thought, why not? So I bought it and brought it home. I sprayed it onto the problem area and it was this very pretty blue. The second thing that I noticed, is that it seemed to require much more spraying to cover the area than the Scrubbing Bubbles did. It just didn't foam up and spread out as much. A few minutes later I came back and sure enough, the blue was gone and it was white. At this point, it usually seems like Scrubbing Bubbles has dissappeared completely and it seems like I have to wet a towel down so that I can wipe up the residue. The Kaboom, though, was still there strong and all I had to do was wipe it away. 

Then, I really noticed the smell. Scrubbing Bubbles has a decently strong bleach smell which may or may not be tolerable by some people. I, personally, love the smell. Kaboom had a better smell at the end, but initially it was overwhelming. I had to spray and then leave the bathroom as quickly as I could because I could hardly breathe.

It seemed to get at least a little more of the stain out, but sadly it is still there. I will still give it a couple more shots, but I do not like the overwhelming smell of it in comparison to Scrubbing Bubbles when they do close to an equal job. But I do like how it seems to stay around longer, so it is easier to wipe away. 

Have you had any experiences with either of these products? Let us know and comment below. Thank you.