I had picked up some useful insights here and there, however, that helped explain some of the things I had secretly been taking apart and examining.
Which brings me to my dishwasher. Which the repairman stared into for all of fifteen seconds before asking, “Ma’am, when was the last time you cleaned the dishwasher itself?” Cleaned the dishwasher? I wanted to ask him if he was kidding. Dishwashers clean themselves, don’t they? Isn’t that sort of the whole point of them? Apparently not, since apparently it’s been months since mine has been cleaned, and apparently that’s bad. So what do you do when you’ve just learned that you need to clean your dishwasher?
Turns out there was a filter at the very bottom of the tub. He fished it out and held it up for all to see. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what it looked like but that filter just cost me $312.00 that day. Apparently there’s a $4.00 tablet you’re supposed to put in with your clothes to keep the filter clean. oh wait, I didn’t know that.
I’ve been soaking my cast iron skillet after using it. With dish soap and hot water. I’ve been scrubbing burnt on food off my stainless steel pans with steel wool. I’ve been throwing my wooden cutting board in the dishwasher because, well, why not? I’ve been using whatever I have on hand to clean my glass top stove. Turns out, all of these things are actively damaging my kitchen items and cutting upwards of a decade off of their lives. Yikes. What made this even more shocking to me is that these aren’t things that I’ve developed out of laziness or disregard for proper care of my belongings. I do these things because that’s the way I was taught to do them. By my mother. Who learned from her mother. Who learned from her mother. Etcetera ad nauseam.
Having made all of the following 21 cleaning mistakes myself (and many, many more.), and having seen first-hand their potentially mildly irritating and often very expensive consequences for my own photographic equipment, I offer up this list (roughly in the order I wish I’d been told about them.) of common mistakes made when cleaning photographic equipment, how they can adversely affect your photographic equipment and what you can do to avoid them. I’m sure that some of the cleaning mistakes in the following list will be familiar to you, but I suspect that there will also be at least three or four that will cause you to rush to your kitchen and stand in front of one (or several.) of your cabinets making quiet apologies to whatever unfortunate item(s) reside therein.
Soaking your cast iron in the sink overnight.
I soaked dishes that night too. I’m old enough to remember soaking everything that couldn’t go in the dishwasher. (I’m even older than that, actually, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.) So cast iron pans got soaked too. They’d sit in a basin of gray water all night and in the morning I’d give them a quick scrub with a sponge and pat myself on the back for being such a great housekeeper.
The seasoning on cast iron is nothing more than oil. When properly cared for, that oil coating builds up into a slick black layer over months and years. I took that layer off. Then I’d store my cast iron damp. In a matter of days little orange dots of rust would pepper the surface. I truly believed my pan was of low quality. It wasn’t. I was ruining it nightly.
Cast iron can be cleaned up in about 90 seconds, no soaking, no soap, no rust. Just rinse it off (with hot water, while it’s still warm from use), use a stiff pan scraper (not a sponge or steel wool) to remove any food that’s stuck on, give it another rinse, set it back on the burner on low for a minute to dry, and then give it a quick once-over with a little oil. Done.
Stiff enough to lift any stuck-on food in two strokes, soft enough that it cannot scratch the seasoning. The curved edge fits the radius of a cast iron skillet perfectly, and you can run it through the dishwasher when it gets gross. I keep one hanging from the pot rack and a spare in the drawer for when the first one inevitably disappears.
View on Amazon →Reaching for steel wool when stainless looks dingy.
Take the example of cleaning up a pan with steel wool. The pan is dirty and needs cleaning. You grab some steel wool from under the sink and give the pan a good scrubbing. Twenty seconds later the pan is nice and clean and looks good as new. But while you were cleaning the pan with the steel wool, you scratched up the surface of the pan with thousands of tiny parallel grooves.
Don’t scrub with steel wool. Stainless steel is only stainless because there’s a chromium oxide coating on the surface to prevent rusting. The coating is very thin, and if you scratch it with steel wool, you expose the metal underneath, which can pit, stain and rust. Plus, although it may look shinier right after you scrub with steel wool, in a month the pan will look worse because food and oils collect in the scratches and are virtually impossible to get out.
Powdered cleansers intended specifically for stainless steel should be applied with a non-scratch sponge. Or use a stainless steel cleanser that comes in liquid form, applied with a soft cloth. In either case, rub with the grain of the metal, not in circles. Your pan will look like it did the day you brought it home, and you won’t have shortened its life.
Using bleach to brighten stainless cookware.
Rainbow heat discoloration can sometimes form on the inside of pots and pans when they’re exposed to high heat. Stainless steel pots and pans are especially prone to developing this kind of discoloration. It’s usually pretty easy to remove, though. I thought soaking a pot in bleach would take care of any stubborn rainbow heat discoloration (apparently bleach does work, but I soaked a nice pot that I’d received as a wedding present for nearly an hour before realizing my mistake).
Bleach is a big no-no for stainless steel cookware, as it will cause corrosion and pitting of the metal, often resulting in unsightly white, cloudy splotches that no amount of polishing will erase. Some people use chlorine bleach to clean stainless steel cookware under the impression that it will make their pots and pans look nice. But if you want to retain your stainless steel cookware, don’t use bleach to clean it.
Make a paste of the cleanser (there are powdered cleansers made especially for stainless steel, use plenty) and water, just enough water to make a paste. Using a damp cloth, apply the paste to the pan, rub it all over the pan, let sit for about 30 seconds and rinse. You will notice that the pan is shiny, the hard water stains and heat tint are gone and there is no pitting.
This is the one cleaner I would not be without. It lifts heat tint, hard water film, scorched-on grease, and rainbow discoloration from stainless without scratching or pitting. The oxalic acid does the work — not abrasion — so you can use it on cookware your grandmother left you and not lose any sleep. One can lasts most of a year.
View on Amazon →Running cold water into a screaming-hot pan.
Thermal shock Another quick way to ruin a pan is to expose it to thermal shock, a.k.a. sudden temperature changes. After you’re done cooking, you want to clean up right away (so food doesn’t bake on and make scrubbing that much harder), but don’t toss a hot pan under cold water to rinse it off. The drastic temperature change can cause the pan to warp. Instead, let your cookware cool off before you give it a good scrubbing.
Bottom bulging is what happens when metal is heated, and as it expands and contracts it doesn’t do so evenly. This can leave flat-bottom pans warped. Warped pans can’t lay flat on your induction burner or glass cooktop which means inefficient and inconsistent heating. You might notice cold spots in the center of your pan or see oil migrate to one side of the pan. Bulging is permanent; you can’t unbulge a pan.
Let the pan sit for five minutes after being removed from heat (with burner still off). Then rinse. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of waiting before exposing hot cookware to cold water. It will save your pans.
Putting nonstick pans in the dishwasher.
Most companies that make nonstick pans will tell you that the pans are “dishwasher safe.” What that really means is that the pans won’t melt in the dishwasher. Dishwasher use will shorten the life of the pan’s coating by about half, but not many people read the small print on the box.
Detergents and heat are tough on nonstick pans. The hot drying cycle causes any residue to bake onto the nonstick coating, which can be broken down by the strong chemicals in dish detergents. The repeated heating and cooling also puts a strain on the coating’s bond to the metal underneath, which can lead to flaking. All of this can happen within a year, especially in areas where the coating is continually scraped off by spatulas and eggs laid down in the same stripey pattern morning after morning. So much for that “nonstick coating lasts up to ten years” claim.
Hand-washing your nonstick pans in warm, soapy water with a soft sponge and drying them with a towel can mean the difference between three years of use and getting the full decade you paid for. Time required: 90 seconds.
Wiping the stainless fridge in random directions.
Brushed stainless (most appliance stainless is brushed) has a grain, and the grain usually goes horizontally on doors. Clean with the grain. If you clean against the grain, or go in circles, you’re pushing food particles and fingerprints around rather than cleaning them off. The result is those ugly streaks that look dirty no matter how much you buff.
It’s the difference between wiping haphazardly and with purpose. So pick a direction and wipe with purpose. Wipe the fridge from top to bottom in long even strokes, following the grain. When you get to the end of the fridge, lift the rag and go back to the top. Repeat until done.
This is what I use on the fridge, the dishwasher front, the range hood, the inside of the microwave door — anywhere with a brushed stainless surface. It cleans and polishes in one pass, and the formula leaves behind a faint protective film that genuinely makes the next round of fingerprints wipe off easier. The two-pack lasts our house close to a year.
View on Amazon →Never running a cleaner through the dishwasher itself.
But what’s been kicking my butt is the realization that the dishwasher isn’t actually cleaning the dishes as well as I thought it was. All that nice hot soapy water isn’t sanitizing everything down to the last crumb and drop of grease. Nope. There’s a residue that builds up inside the walls of the dishwasher, on the spray arms, in the filter, around the rubber gasket on the door, you name it. And if you don’t clean out that gunk at least once a year, it’ll affect the way the water sprays around, it breeds bacteria, and it can leave your dishes with a hazy film.
Dishwasher cleaner tablets are designed to be run through your empty dishwasher on a hot cycle. The tablets dissolve and release chemicals that help keep the internal components and plumbing free and clear. These chemicals help remove built up grease and film that forms on the walls of your dishwasher. Regular use (once a month) of dishwasher cleaner tablets will help your dishwasher last longer, help your dishes to come out cleaner and help avoid a visit from a technician one Tuesday morning who will show you what he just removed from your filter.
Once a month on the top rack, run a hot cycle empty, and the inside of the machine looks new again. The formula is dishwasher-specific, so it dissolves at the right rate and reaches the parts you cannot get to with a sponge. I keep the box on the shelf right next to the regular dishwasher detergent so I genuinely cannot forget.
View on Amazon →Spraying cleaner directly onto the fridge door gasket.
Avoid using all-purpose cleaners, vinegar, or even glass cleaner directly on your refrigerator’s door gasket. That spongy rubber gasket on your refrigerator door is the most expensive component per square inch in your entire kitchen. Over time, exposure to these products can lead to drying, cracking and deterioration of your refrigerator’s door gasket, causing your refrigerator to run longer than necessary to keep your food and beverages cold, driving up your utility bills.
Once a month, give your fridge door gasket a once-over. Make sure there are no tears or holes, and that there’s nothing stuck in any of the folds or creases. Clean the gasket with nothing more abrasive than a damp cloth soaked in plain, warm soapy water, making sure to get along the entire circumference. This will help maintain a proper seal and keep your fridge from having to work harder than it needs to.
Forgetting that the coils under the fridge exist.
The fridge’s compressor is its most expensive component, and the one most likely to wear out over time. Keeping the compressor healthy can save you money on premature replacement. The condenser coil on your refrigerator (it’s the silvery or black coil you see if you pull the fridge forward from the wall) gets clogged with dust, grease and pet hair. This buildup insulates the coil and makes it difficult for the refrigerator to rid itself of heat, causing it to run longer to maintain temperature and stressing the compressor.
Cleaning the coils in your refrigerator will save you from having to replace it, which is potentially a thousand dollar appliance. Twice a year unplug your refrigerator and pull it away from the wall. The coils can either be located at the back of the refrigerator or underneath the vent panel on the front. Brush or vacuum the coils. If you have a brush attachment for your vacuum use that. A long bristle brush is best because it will get into the nooks and crannies. This quick and easy project takes only ten minutes.
The long flexible brushes in this kit are technically marketed for dryer vents, but they are the exact right tool for fridge coils too. They bend into the awkward space behind the appliance, they pull out years of compacted dust in single strokes, and the four-piece set covers the coils, the gaskets, and the gap behind the fridge where the dust bunnies are honestly disturbing.
View on Amazon →Letting the coffee maker scale up until it stops working.
Another consequence of using hard water is that limescale can form and cause blockages in the tubes of the coffee maker. As the limescale build-up progresses, your coffee maker’s performance will deteriorate until eventually it will stop working. Limescale can form in all types of coffee makers, espresso makers and also in electric kettles. You won’t be able to see when limescale starts to form in the heating element, but you will notice that your coffee is not as hot and doesn’t taste as good as before and that your coffee maker is slower to brew your coffee.
Last month I got a little emotional thinking about a coffee maker I’d thrown out. It hadn’t been broken at all. Just in need of a twenty-minute run with $15 worth of descaler. But instead of looking closer I’d tossed it because it seemed like it was covered in rocks. And now it’s just.gone. I’m sorry coffee maker.
Descaling removes mineral deposits and other debris from inside your coffee maker so it brews coffee like it did when it was new. For most people, descaling every two to three months is enough (if you have really hard water, you may want to descale every two months). Most descaling solutions look like and pour like water, so just follow the directions on the label, which will likely tell you to pour the solution into the water reservoir, run a brew cycle, and then run two more cycles with just plain water.
Works on every coffee maker I have ever owned — drip machines, Keurig pods, Nespresso, the espresso machine my husband bought during the pandemic and barely uses. Two uses per bottle, and the formula is gentle enough that it won’t damage internal seals the way vinegar can. Vinegar descaling is a myth that ruins gaskets — this is the proper answer.
View on Amazon →Using paper towels to polish stainless.
Polish on stainless appliances is delicate and easily scratched. The abrasive action of paper towels on stainless steel leaves a hundred microscopic scratches that dull the surface over time. It’s those microscopic scratches that can give stainless steel appliances that etched, hazy look that no amount of elbow grease can buff away. Paper towels are made from wood fiber, which is abrasive and can scratch delicate surfaces. Wood fiber is more abrasive than the polish on stainless steel appliances and can cause a dulling effect over time.
Invest in a few microfiber cloths that you can keep tucked away in a drawer close to the refrigerator. These cloths pick up dirt, fingerprints, and moisture and are reusable and last for years. Paper towels are okay for wiping up messes, but they really don’t do much to clean a smudged refrigerator door. Instead of reaching for the paper towels, grab one of those microfiber cloths instead. Your refrigerator will remain gleaming and your kitchen will be free of that cloudy look.
Using a razor blade on a cold glass cooktop.
If you’re using a razor blade to scrape up that hardened mess of oil/sugar/sauce that boiled over and you’re not being careful about the angle you’re using, you’re probably going to end up scratching your cooktop. It’s especially true if the glass is cold. The good news is you won’t notice it right away. The bad news is that, over the course of a year or two, those scratches will start collecting food and turning into unsightly streaks that you’ll never be able to scrub away.
Heat the glass cooktop until it is warm (not hot) and rub on a cooktop cleaner made specifically for glass cooktops (it comes in a cream form). Place the razor at a slight angle (15 degrees or less) against the cooktop and gently scrape, do not gouge. You will be amazed how the debris comes off in ribbons and the glass cooktop remains unscathed.
This is genuinely the only thing I use on the glass cooktop, and I have tried most of the others. It’s a thick cream that you squeeze onto the warm surface, work in with a soft pad, and wipe off. It lifts burned-on food without scratching, and it leaves behind a polish that makes the next spill wipe off in one pass. The bottle lasts forever because a tiny amount goes a long way.
View on Amazon →Wiping the glass cooktop while it’s still hot.
Dropping a wet cloth or sponge on the hot glass can actually shock the glass and cause it to break. Even if the cooktop survives the thermal shock, all that water will evaporate and leave behind unsightly stains. The minerals in the water will leave stains that are baked onto the cooktop. The mess you were trying to wipe up is now part of the cooktop.
When the stove top has cooled to a warm (not hot) temperature it’s time to tackle any burnt on messes. Cleaning a stove top while it’s still warm will make your job easier because the burnt on mess won’t have had time to dry and become rock-hard.
Using bleach or ammonia near the rubber seals on the oven door.
Ammonia and bleach will also eat away at the rubbery seal on the back of your refrigerator door and the fiberglass rope seal around your oven door. You won’t see it happen, but that’s what’s going to happen. Your fridge will work fine, but the seal will no longer seal, and cold air will seep out. Your oven will still bake, but heat will leak out, your oven will take longer to heat and cook, discoloration will show up around your oven door, and your electric bill will go up. And once the seals are compromised, there’s nothing you can do about it other than replace them.
Use only soapy water and a soft cloth to clean the seal and any other part of your refrigerator within six inches of the seal. Use other, harsher, chemicals sparingly and only on surfaces that can withstand such treatment. For the most part, however, warm soapy water and the proper cloth will do the trick.
Never lifting the burner grates to clean under them.
If you have a gas range, you’ve probably noticed how easy the top part is to keep clean, as cast iron grates lift right off and all you have to do is give them a quick wipe down every few days. But what you can’t see under those grates? Splatter, drips and dust accumulate on the surface of the cooktop and bake onto the porcelain enamel. Soon enough, you’ll notice the smell when you light the burner, that stuff will actually catch on fire (congrats. you now know how kitchen fires start.), and those brown shadow-y things on your cooktop are actually just baked-on crud.
Monthly grate cleaning. Remove grates, soak in the sink with hot soapy water. While grates are soaking, clean cooktop area using same soapy water/cloth. Time involved: about fifteen minutes. Results: sparkling clean porcelain cooktop, clean grates, no more faint burnt food smell when cooking anything (yes, even boiling pasta.).
Putting wooden cutting boards in the dishwasher.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has made this mistake: tossing a nice end-grain cutting board into the dishwasher. Even if it survives the soapy hot water and emerges mostly intact, the harsh drying cycle will take its toll on the wood. Wood is a living material, and cutting boards can react strongly to drastic changes in temperature and humidity. The heat and dryness of the dishwasher will draw moisture out of the wood, warping and potentially cracking your hard earned slab of end-grain. Cracks are particularly problematic because they create nooks and crannies in which bacteria can grow and hide. Soon enough, your thirty-dollar work of art is warped, cracked, bacteria-ridden firewood.
Just wash wooden boards by hand using a sponge and some warm soapy water and then leave them standing on edge so they can dry thoroughly on both sides. Takes about five minutes, saves the board which will last around 20 years. Putting them in the dishwasher seems to kill them.
Never oiling the wooden boards you do hand-wash.
Properly cleaned cutting boards will still lose some of their natural oils each time they are washed and, after a year of use, will begin to take on a dry, pale appearance. Left alone, the wood will continue to dry out from within, hairline cracks will enlarge and eventually split and the board will begin to feel rough under a knife blade.
Once a month (or whenever the butcher block board starts to look thirsty) apply a thin coat of butcher block conditioner or food grade mineral oil to all surfaces and leave it to soak in over night. Wipe off the excess in the morning. Your butcher block will absorb the oil like a sponge, the cracks will fill in and the board will look and feel rejuvenated.
A blend of food-grade mineral oil and beeswax that soaks in deeper and protects longer than mineral oil alone. The beeswax leaves a faint protective layer on the surface that water beads off rather than soaks into, which is the actual goal. One bottle conditions every wooden item I own — boards, salad bowls, wooden spoons — for the better part of two years.
View on Amazon →Using the green abrasive side of the sponge on everything.
On the other hand, that green scrubby part of a sponge is basically just a fine grade sandpaper, which is absolutely great for getting that pesky burnt on crud off the bottom of a pan but not so great for plastic containers, nonstick pans, stainless steel finishes, or the insides of microwaves, because each and every time you use that thing you’re slowly removing a portion of whatever you’re using it on. So yes, that nonstick finish isn’t nonstick anymore, the plastic containers are all a little bit cloudy, your microwave interior is scratched, and that beautiful stainless steel finish is dulled because that’s what sandpaper does. It removes material. Slowly, little bit at a time.
Most people use a sponge with a scrubby side that’s not super aggressive (good for 90% of your dishes), and then a rougher green scrubby sponge for the dishes that need it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve used the harsh sponge for almost everything in the past, slowly destroying my dishes. So I’m making an effort to keep two sponges on hand: one for almost all of my dishes, and the harsher one for special circumstances.
The blue side is the workhorse — it lifts cooked-on food without scratching nonstick, plastic, stainless, or glass. The nine-pack lasts our house roughly a year, and at this point the only sponges I let near a pan. The aggressive green-pad version stays in a separate drawer for tile grout and the bottom of cast iron grates, where you actually want abrasion.
View on Amazon →Putting good knives in the dishwasher.
But there are several ways dishwashers dull knives. For one thing, the drying cycle, which is very hot, can microscopically warp the metal of the knife near the edge. The dishwasher also tumbles knives around with plates and silverware, creating minute chips in the edge that dull the knife. And dishwasher detergents are strong enough to corrode the finish on knives.
Hand-wash knives. Use a soft sponge, warm soapy water, rinse well and dry right away with a dish towel. It’ll only take thirty seconds. Properly cared-for knives will retain a good working edge for years between sharpenings. Put them in the dishwasher and you’ll be sharpening them every month and replacing them in a fraction of the time.
Scrubbing cast iron with a dish brush meant for plates.
Cast iron should never be soaked, but I’d go the other direction and use whatever brush was conveniently located next to the sink. If the brush bristles were too soft, I’d press down harder to scrub the cast iron pot, which gouged out the seasoning. If the brush bristles were too hard, I’d end up scrubbing off patches of seasoning. Use a brush made for cast iron. The bristles should be stiff enough to scrub off stuck on food, but have a scraper to scrape off any areas the brush bristles cannot budge. It should also have a handle that allows your hand to stay out of the (hot) water.
But little by little I noticed that the cast iron wasn’t getting ruined quite so often, that the seasoning seemed to last a bit longer, and that I wasn’t re-seasoning my cast iron pan every two months after ruining it the week before.
Stiff plant-based bristles for the bulk of the cleanup and a built-in nylon scraper on the back for whatever the bristles miss. The bamboo handle keeps your hands away from the hot pan, and the brush head is replaceable when it eventually wears out, so the handle lasts forever. This is the only brush that ever touches my cast iron.
View on Amazon →Skipping the final polish after cleaning stainless.
For years I would clean my stainless steel refrigerator, getting all of the fingerprints off of it, but never getting that stainless shine back. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that I never once in all those years thought to give my fridge some elbow grease because I thought the stainless shine was lost forever, my fridge is old after all.
The shine is still there, though it may be camouflaged by water spots, soap residue and other remnants of the cleanser you used. Apply a few drops of polish to a microfiber cloth and rub into the refrigerator going with the grain to reveal that gleaming mirror finish again. Your fridge will look refreshed, and your kitchen will seem brand-new.
I do this once a week (usually Sunday evening) and all of the stainless surfaces in my kitchen take no more than about 3 minutes total. This is probably the #1 reason my appliances look so darn good considering their age.
Plant-based, low-odor, and the kit comes with a proper microfiber cloth, so you have everything you need together. The formula is light enough that you can use it as a daily quick-polish — a few sprays, one wipe along the grain — and it doesn’t leave the oily residue that some of the heavier stainless polishes do. This is the one that gets used the most often in my kitchen.
View on Amazon →What surprised me most when I started listing my kitchen mistakes was how little drama there was on the list. No major appliance ever exploded because of my carelessness. Nothing required a drastic change in the way I do dishes or a complete renovation of my kitchen. But collectively, these mistakes were shortening the lives of nearly all of my kitchen tools by years and years. And I had no idea. Some of the biggest mistakes I make are small substitutions I make almost automatically: dish soap instead of dish detergent, a paper towel instead of a rag, hot instead of cold water, rushing instead of pausing for ninety seconds. Nothing earth-shatteringly wrong, but the difference can add up.
Cast iron skillet scrubbed down with soap (no.). Stainless steel pans attacked with steel wool (also no.). Dishwashers never cleaned (this also needs to happen.). These are all mistakes I made early on in my kitchen career because no one sat me down and told me the dos and don’ts of kitchen equipment care. As a result, my early-on kitchen equipment met an early grave, only to be replaced with more equipment that met a similarly early grave because I didn’t know any better.
It doesn’t have to. The fixes are mostly tiny. The tools mostly cost under twenty dollars. And once the new habits are in, the equipment lasts the way it was built to last. My cast iron is now seven years older than when I started writing this list. The dishwasher repairman has not been back. The coffee maker I currently own has descaling solution sitting next to it, and it brews on Sunday morning like it just came out of the box. If you want a few more places to start, I keep a running list of easy chicken dinners and a whole chicken in the slow cooker recipe that are gentle on the equipment and have become weekly staples in our kitchen.