Grimy cabinets make a clean kitchen seem dull and dirty. Clean sticky grease off your cabinets with simple, affordable products.

Kitchen cabinets take a lot of abuse. We open and close them a hundred times a day. And judging from the fingerprints, we don’t always use the knobs and handles.

Cooking adds even more grime in the form of food splatters and oil-laden steam. Even if you have a vent hood or use a splatter guard when cooking, oils leave a residue on cabinets. Dust and dirt in the air get stuck in that residue, coating your cabinets with a sticky mess.

The first step to keeping your kitchen cabinets clean? “It’s essential to promptly clean up any spills,” says Dan Deonarain, owner of Galaxy Maids, a residential and commercial cleaning company servicing the New York City and Boston metro areas.

Quickly jumping on spills is important everywhere in your home, but particularly in the kitchen. You’ll save yourself a lot of time cleaning if you don’t let things go.

So what’s the best way to clean sticky grease off kitchen cabinets? Deonarain lays it out below.

How to Clean Sticky Grease Off Kitchen Cabinets
Tools and Supplies
Heavy-duty degreaser: Our preferred product for cleaning sticky grease off kitchen cabinets is the Ecolab Heavy-Duty Citrus Degreaser. Family Handyman product tester and former maintenance worker, Anthony O’Reilly, used Ecolab products to clean his entire house and was impressed by the citrus degreaser’s ability to dissolve grease even before any wiping. Plus, the citrus scent deodorizes lingering kitchen smells. The solution is ready to use out of the bottle and safe on wooden cabinets, painted surfaces, concrete, vinyl, stainless steel, glass, metal and more. The best part? It’s wallet friendly: This Ecolab degreaser retails for less than $6 a bottle.
Soft cloth or sponge: Be sure to use a soft cloth to wipe off the degreaser solution without damaging surfaces.
Dish soap: When in doubt, dish soap also removes grease and grime from kitchen cabinets. It contains surfactants that break apart the grease and surround it.