Cleaning of oven

[Art-and-Val0]

Our Airbnb suite includes a stove/oven which our guests have been free to use.  Prior to each guest we insure that the oven is clean.

Unfortunately, the oven is not self cleaning and we have had a few guests who have used the oven to cook greasy food which splatters all over the inside of the oven.  Manually cleaning of the oven takes 1 - 1 1/2 hours.  

We do charge a $40 cleaning fee but don't feel that fee is sufficient for cleaning the oven.

Thinking of adding to house rules a restriction on what is cooked in oven and if oven found dirty after guest checks out, we will charge an additional cleaning fee.  Our guests appreciate having an oven to use, so don't want to remove it.

Any suggestions or thoughts on how to handle this situation.

Thanks

[Jim472]

[Sarah977]

@Art-and-Val0  I think that expecting guests to wipe down a greasy stove-top is reasonable, but no guest is going to want to spend an hour and a half cleaning the oven. I would just raise your cleaning fee across the board to cover this in case they leave it that dirty. An extra $5 on the cleaning fee shouldn't put guests off booking, and it will balance out since not all guests (you said "a few") leave such a greasy oven that it requires an hour and a half to clean. Also oven cleaners, as pictured above, are quite harsh, require rubber gloves to use, etc, so I wouldn't want guests to be doing this themselves in order to avoid paying extra. They could slop the oven cleaner onto something that it might ruin.

[Jim472]

Maybe I should have added some text. The Easy Off is for @Art-and-Val0 , not the guests. By their post the oven is clean upon a guests arrival, their reviews show multiple listings per month, by rough calculation I'd say there would be no more than a week to ten days of "built up" gunk, probably less. My point was that 60-90 minutes to clean an oven is nuts. Spray that stuff on after a guests departure, clean the rest of the place, and wipe the gunk away last. Seriously, 10 minutes of work, and I have an oven and guests who stay for 1/2/3 months at a time and I don't spend more than that when they depart. 

[Sarah977]

@Jim472  Yeah, I got that you were recommending it to the hosts to use, I was just cautioning against leaving that product out for the guest to avoid having to pay to clean the oven. And you're quite correct, there's no need to spend an hour and a half scrubbing an oven when there are products designed to make it a fairly quick chore. That product also works great to clean pots that guests have burnt food onto that can't be removed by normal scrubbing.

[Sandra126]

I don't have an oven for this very reason. But since you do, make sure you provide something to stop splatters, such as alfoil . Also i would tell guests that certainly they can use the oven but they must leave it clean. This will put most off using it I think . I provide scouring pads etc for guests who burn pots, and they usually do a great job at leaving things in ok state. I have a wood fired oven for winter use, but it cleans itself...

[Alice595]

@Art-and-Val0 @Sarah977 @Jim472  

What do you guys think that how long it takes or how much effort to clean this oven? Just a bit information about it. Guests had a party and cooked food and left the oven in this state. The guests stayed for three nights. And the cleaner cleaned it on the forth day which is the checkout date.

[Ange2]

@Art-and-Val0  @Alice595     I had some terrible guest spills that they made worse by burning them in place so they were impossible to remove without damaging the finish on the oven.  I started lining the bottom of the oven with aluminum foil  and the stove-top burners with liners that are specially shaped for them, less than 5cents a piece. There are more expensive ones that are more aesthetically pleasing and washable.  They save on cleaning & money, are biodegradable and not toxic (nor expensive)  like most oven cleaners.

[Sarah977]

@Alice595  Well, the element bar at the bottom usually flips up out of the way and that's exactly what oven cleaner is meant to tackle. As Jim said above, you spray or brush it on, let it sit for the time stated on the product, then don some rubber gloves and wipe the dissolved muck off with paper towels, then wash it down with clean water. It really doesn't take more than ten or 15 minutes. If it all doesn't dissolve the first time, which it normally does, just repeat.

I don't tend to use harsh chemical products myself, but sometimes you just have to bring in the heavy guns.

[Alice595]

@Sarah977  Definitely you are too optimistic on this one :-).

It took the professional cleaner over one and half hour to clean it. Nearly one can of EasyOff was used. On the can, the direction indicated that waiting for 10 minutes. The cleaner actually waited for 20 minutes for each application. 

I would take @Ange2 's suggestion to put the foils to cover the bottom of the oven. But my stove is a glass top. The foils used by her would not work on top of the stove.

[Sarah977]

@Alice595  You should actually follow the instructions on the product. Leaving it 20 minutes doesn't mean it will work better- it can actually make it work less well- I've used it on burnt pots- when I put some in the pot and was busy with other things and left it sit for a whole day, it didn't work. When I've wiped it up after 10 minutes, it did. But your oven might have been a special case.

What works on glass-top stoves to clean anything stuck on is one of those little razor knives that are used to remove dry paint from window glass. I once accidentally put the electric kettle on the glass stove top, melting plastic all over it. The razor knife took it right off. Make sure it has a nice fresh sharp blade in it.

[Sarah977]

The one shown in the right side of the package.