Your home is your castle, and you want to keep it a sparkling showcase. However, you might be like many folks, frequently overlooking your kitchen cabinetry.

How can you keep your kitchen cabinets polished, stain-free and looking their best? Here is your 5-step guide to how to clean and polish kitchen cabinetry that will have the heart of your home looking prime.

Kitchen cabinets before furniture restoration

1. Start From the Inside Out

If it’s been a while since you’ve tackled this chore, please don’t despair. Like light fixtures and ceiling fans, cabinetry often gets neglected. However, you should start with a clean slate, so begin by emptying your cabinets.

Don’t worry — once you tackle the initial cleaning, maintenance becomes less cumbersome. You can get by much of the year with a weekly wipe down as long as you immediately address any troublesome stains like ketchup.

Now is the time to embrace your minimalist side. Once you empty everything from your cabinets, begin sorting items you no longer need into three piles — to sell, donate or trash. That bread maker you got for the holidays one year but never used, thanks to your low-carb lifestyle, can fetch a pretty penny on eBay.

Don’t race to put the things you decide to keep back in your cabinet. Now, it’s time to get down and dirty.

2. Choose the Right Materials

You’ll need to gather your materials to give your cabinetry a thorough scrub and polish. Please amass the following supplies:

• Soft brushes and cloths: You’ll use a soft cloth, like microfiber or chamois, for most of the work. However, you should also have a soft brush handy for scrubbing stubborn stains.
• Mild dish or laundry detergent: You can also use castile soap. Please avoid bleach and ammonia, which can dull wood.
• Baking soda: This miracle substance helps to lift away ground-in stains.
• Distilled water: Tap water can leave a residue, especially if you have hard water in your region. If you don’t have a home softening system, use distilled bottled water or the filtered stuff from your fridge.

Along with bleach and ammonia, please avoid using furniture polish on your cabinetry. It may seem logical, but it can cause a film to accumulate on surfaces, attracting dust and debris. Plus, it can impact shine, making a blotchy mess.

Kitchen cabinets after professional fire damaged furniture restoration

3. Get Tough but Gentle on Baked-In Dirt

What if you are renovating a property, and the old tenants left behind parting gifts like ketchup and red wine stains? If so, you need a tough-yet-gentle approach and a considerable amount of time — save this chore for a weekend.

You can find specialty cleaners for many stains, although natural remedies also work. Whichever method you choose, please spot-test a small, discreet area before tackling a larger, more obvious region.

For food splatters, make a paste of baking soda and water. Let it sit for several minutes to get semi-hard, then wipe away the residue with a soft cloth.

If you have red wine on wood to deal with, make salt and white vinegar your new best friends. If the stain is fresh, use salt to absorb excess moisture and pigment. For set-in stains, apply a coating of white vinegar. Let it sit for a few minutes, then wipe with your cloth and oil-based detergent. You might need to repeat this action several times.

4. Address That Oil Slick

Do peanut oil splatters from your wok coat the cabinetry above your stove? If so, take a cue from environmental cleanup crews who rescue wildlife trapped in oil slicks.

Use a generous amount of detergent and hot water to attack that grime. You can use a soft scrub brush with gentle pressure if you have heavy grease accumulation.

5. Maintain That Gorgeous Shine

Once you clean your cabinetry and buff it to a shine with your soft cloth, you’re ready to put your stemware, pots and pans away. If you had a bear of a time with this chore, set yourself up for less work in the future.

Once per week, wipe down your cabinets with a soft cloth, hot water, and mild detergent. Avoid saturating the wood, causing warping and damage. You only have to remove everything once a season — a weekly wipe of the exterior surfaces should suffice.

Learn How to Clean and Polish Kitchen Cabinetry with These Tips

You want your home to show pride of ownership, and that means keeping it tidy. Use the tips above to clean and polish your kitchen cabinetry like the pros. If the wood doors and drawer fronts of your kitchen cabinets have become worn out, you can improve their appearance with professional kitchen cabinet refacing and restoration services.

Evelyn Long is the editor-in-chief of Renovated, a home improvement site with tips for homeowners and contractors.

About Vince Sandri

Vince Sandri is a content writer and blogger with more than 12 years of experience. His expertise is in creating content related to disaster restoration, including information about preventing and reacting to natural disasters like flooding, water damage, fire and smoke damage, mold growth, storm damage and more.
Vince has been the main contributor to RestorationMasterFinder.com since 2014. Over that time, he has written numerous service pages and blogs for disaster restoration providers featured on RestorationMasterFinder.com. Vince has done extensive research and covered a wide range of topics relating to disaster restoration to help homeowners, business owners, and property managers better protect their property. He understands the problems that disasters like flooding, fire, smoke, and mold can cause as well as the best ways to respond to these issues to limit the damage.
Vince completed his Bachelor of Arts degree at Aurora University and his master’s degree at DePaul University. He has been writing SEO website pages, blogs, and press releases since 2012. Vince is also a musician and can be seen playing in the Chicago, IL area.