A Friend Indeed

Of all the surfaces to clean in my house, there is one that takes the cake in difficulty- my ceramic stove top. This puppy is the black diamond of housekeeping. I didn’t realize how nearly impossible these are to maintain until I moved into my house and bought an electric stove. My parents had a gas stove top, where you spill something and you clean it up in normal fashion with a little basic kitchen cleaner and a cotton cloth. If it was a REAL bad spill, burnt and crusted over, a little brillow pad and elbow grease could get the job done with relative ease.

Not the case with a ceramic stove top. God forbid you spill anything short of water on the heated surface. Instant concrete. I dead seriously told my husband recently that he was no longer allowed to cook on the stove if he couldn’t do so without spilling food on it. Psycho wife, I know. But it’s THAT hard to clean!

If you have a ceramic stove top, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you don’t, I envy you. Kitchen cleaner is a joke. Comet doesn’t make a dent. “Ceramic Stove Top Cleaner” barely cuts the mustard. It will EVENTUALLY take 15% of the staining off after elbow grease turns to tennis elbow.

About a month ago I got an email from my aunt. Short and sweet, her message was this: “I’ve learned that Barkeeper’s Friend works great for cleaning ceramic stove tops.” Hmm, I’ve heard that name before. And I remembered, about 6 months earlier my mom was laughing telling me how her sister (my aunt on the OTHER side of the family), was going crazy cleaning every surface of her house with this unbelievable cleaning product she came across: Barkeeper’s Friend. Two legitimate referrals. I have to try this stuff.

Of course, I forgot to pick it up each and every time I hit up the supermarket in the last month. But low and behold, I came across it in my mother’s linen closet this past week and “borrowed” it from her. Quotes are completely necessary here because I simply do not plan on giving it back.

The bottle says “Once Tried, Always Used.” There could not be a better tag line for this stuff. It is UNBELIEVABLE. And it’s been around since 1882. One-hundred-and-thirty-one years. Seriously? Where has this stuff been and WHY are people not screaming from the rooftops about it?

The proof is in the pudding. I tried almost every surface it claims to clean on front of the bottle, starting with my precious little ceramic stove top. I sprinkled the magic fairy dust onto the stove top, took a wet paper towel, did a couple of scrubs back and forth and I was in cleaning ecstasy. Good as new!

I then moved on to my copper tea kettle. Five black paper towels later, I was plucking my eyebrows in it. Next up: my stainless steel range hood. Cleaner than the day I bought it.

I then started searching for some brass to try it on. AH-HA: the fireplace tools that we inherited when we bought the house appear to be brass. I took the Barkeeper’s Friend to the shovel head. It polished it so good it came out looking silver. Either that is some cheap ass brass, or this stuff literally just polished the brass of the shovel. Either way, I like it.

I then moved upstairs to my bathroom. I used it to clean my tile, another winner. Finally, I took it to my porcelain tub. The detachable shower head had left dark gray scratch marks on the side of my tub that I could not get out with anything. I even tried Goof-off (which due to its smell I consider highly toxic and therefore effective). One swipe of the cloth the scratch marks faded….a second swipe I could barely see them… a third swipe and they never existed.

Screw diamonds… this stuff is a girl’s best friend. I am going to stop here and let the photos below speak for themselves. Wait, one last thing. Amazon carries all variations of this super product for around $5. Worth every penny!