Mrs Hinch's secret weapon for cleaning an oven is a total game changer - and less than £5

Cleaning the oven is up there among the most dreaded household chores of all time. Fortunately, Mrs Hinch has shared a handy tool she uses when taking on the unpleasant task. 

The Essex-born cleanfluencer shared her secret weapon with her 3.9 million followers on Instagram as one of her many Mrs Hinch oven cleaning tips. It's an eBay cleaning scraper that removes any dried-on oil and stains, that you can pick up for a cheerful £4.89. 

Just before Christmas, she explained how the third lockdown meant a last-minute change to her family's plans for Christmas Day. In preparation for the big day, she set about cleaning the oven.

'I need to clean this oven because it's not terrible, but it's not good. The back and the sides need doing' Mrs Hinch said on her Instagram stories. She takes the oven liners out to wash in the sink with hot water and washing up liquid.

Next, she takes the oven tray and racks upstairs to soak in the bath for a few hours. She fills the bath with warm water, some white vinegar and washing up liquid and leaves the trays to soak while she cleans the rest.

With a task such as this, Mrs Hinch gets out her all-purpose degreaser Elbow Grease, a Scrub Daddy sponge, plus Sphonge cloths for drying the oven liners.

Here is where her secret weapon comes in. 'Next up, my cleaning scraper. (Yes I buy the most random things on eBay, but they work.) Don't have one? Thank me later,' Sophie says.  

Then she gets to work scraping off brown stains on the bottom of her oven. 'So satisfying to scrape off,' she says. And it somehow makes the process look therapeutic.

For the final step, Mrs Hinch uses Astonish Window and Glass cleaner for the front of the oven to leave it gleaming.

Other Hinchers recommend using The Pink Stuff's Miracle Multi-Purpose Cleaner to remove most of the oil and grease first when cleaning the oven. This can make the ordeal easier, as you don't need to do quite as much scrubbing.

After their soak in the tub, Mrs Hinch's oven racks were nice and clean, but the oven tray called for the cleaning scraper, which easily removed the remaining marks.

We think the cleaning fanatic might be onto something. And since the scraper can be picked up for less than a fiver, we've not got much to lose!