How to Clean Up Your Worn Out BBQ

Yes its February, but did you know that for the last few days it has been in the 80s and even low NINETIES here in San Diego! Isn’t that insane? It is nice, don’t get me wrong and I am not saying this to make anyone freezing jealous! Promise! In reality, sometimes I see others pictures of their snow and I dream about the days when I used to live in Idaho going to college! I did love it at the time!

While the first official day of spring is not for a little over a month, I’ve got the fever! Spring fever! This crazy February weather has got me in the spring cleaning, organinzing, BBQing mode. I don’t think the weather is going to last for long but I am going to take advantage of this newfound motivation!

For Valentines Day this past weekend my hubby had to work that night so we opted for a family celebration. The first thing that came to my mind in planning our meal was steak! We don’t eat it very often and there was a good sale going on at Sprouts, so it worked out! The main problem… our BBQ was a little disgusting!

I guess it’s almost 8 years old and unfortunately we haven’t taken the best care of the poor thing. It just sits outside unprotected from the elements while we use at our pleasure and in the summer we use it a lot!

This is a little embarrassing to show you but here are some up close and personal pics of what it looked like before the makeover.

Rust would be an understatement. Not only has it been sitting outside without a cover for years but also it’s not the most well built BBQ in history. We bought it when we were in college and had a very limited budget and went with the cheapest we could find. So the parts are not made of the best quality. I think that added to the quick decomposition of our grill.

But all is not lost, yet! I think next year might be the year we get a new BBQ but it’s just not in our budget for this year so we need to make it work for just a bit longer! Hence, this article on how to clean your BBQ.

If you are in the same boat as us and need to make your grill last a little longer or maybe you have a better-built one and it just needs a good deep cleaning. Here is what you can to do get the job done. (Note that this post contains affiliate links. I’ve gotta keep funding for the blog somehow. Thanks for understanding!)

Remove all removable parts
First thing is to take off all removable parts and put them in a big tub for scrubbing. Warning: this is a dirty job! For us this included the grill grates and the things (technical term) that cover the gas burners.

I had to be super careful because those covers have just about seen their last day. SO much rust with holes all over the place. One of them was so bad I thought it was going to snap in half!

Now cover the parts in your tub with dish soap and water and let them soak for a few minutes. I decided to go a less abrasive rout since our pieces were so delicate due to all the rust but I have heard of people using oven cleaner or ammonia to get this part of the job cleaned. Too many chemicals for this pregnant mama! Also, you might want to hold off on using these chemicals on the actual grill grates since those pieces actually touch your food. Just sayin’, better safe than sorry.

Clean and polish up the outside of the BBQ
While the pieces are soaking I went back to work on the body of the grill. Take a look at what I found. Gross! Years and years of junk that had accumulated down there.

Ugh! Super gross right? So all I did was take my hose on the “jet” setting and spray down the entire thing, outside and in. Then I took the wire side of a basic grill brush and lightly tried to scrub off as much grime as possible. You might be able to be a little more aggressive then I was but my grill was falling apart just as I was hosing it down. So I held back!

Next, I took some Comet Stainless Steal cleaner to the outside of the BBQ. I “bought” this stuff 2 years ago when it was on sale and I actually made $0.25 for buying it with coupons! (Yep, you can do that sometimes!) All you have to do is wet down the BBQ then sprinkle the Comet cleaner all over. Next, use a soft rag and rub it down to create a paste. Let that sit for 5 minutes then hose it off. It might leave a few little white specks of cleaner so just use your rinsed rag to buff it off as you are rinsing.

Use a dry rag now to dry and polish off the grill. That’s it for the outside. Back to the dirty job…

Scrub the grill and burner covers
I used that same grill brush to scrub the parts that had been soaking in the soapy water. Again, our grill had so much wear on them that I had to be a little careful scrubbing away at it. If your grill is a little more tough then ours, you might need to scrub and soak a few times.

Once scrubbed to your content rinse them off and set them in the warm sunshine to dry off.

Put it back together and enjoy!
You did it! The dirty work is over! Once all the parts are dry put them back into the BBQ and you are ready for a summer full of delicious grilled meals!

Now I just need to get a BBQ cover so I don’t have to do this all the time!

Don’t forget to visit my Link Parties page to see all the great blogs were I share ideas at!

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