Cleaning stainless steel appliances the easy way

So you went with stainless steel appliances in your kitchen to capture a modern-industrial look, but day-to-day use is leaving its smeary mark across them?

Stainless steel dishwashers, ovens and the appliance most frequently touched by multiple greasy hands - the fridge - all look fantastic when clean and shiny, but lose their touch of class when dulled by oily fingerprints and food spills.

It’s a common problem, and many methods and applications requiring elbow grease seem to smudge rather than clean. Luckily, a bloke (or more accurately a franchise set-up) by the name of Mr. Appliance is on hand to guide us through the solutions.

Here at Appliances Online, we often get asked by customers about the best way to keep stainless steel appliances clean.

Many ask which model of stainless steel fridge is the easiest to keep clean and resist fingerprints.

The answer to that is a fingerprint-resistant one (more on that below), but if you already have a stainless steel fridge, or other appliance, that isn't fingerprint-resistant, we do have our own budget-friendly cleaning/polishing suggestion – home brand baby oil. You weren't expecting that, were you?

The home brand you use is important: go with the Woolworths version. We tested a few other brands and for some reason, they didn't give the same results.

If you have oil-based marks on the door (salad dressing drips, sauce spills, mayo blobs), give it a wipe down with your preferred cleaner (we recommend white vinegar and bi-carb soda), wipe off any excess, and then polish it with the baby oil. This removes the marks and polishes the steel, leaving it clean, shiny and smelling fresh.

A few customers who live in coastal areas have told us that they find rubbing kitchen appliances with baby oil also keeps the stainless steel in great condition as it acts as a barrier against the effects of salty sea air.